Overgeneral and specific autobiographical memory predict the course of depression: an updated meta-analysis

Abstract

Impairments in retrieving event-level, specific autobiographical memories, termed overgeneral memory (OGM), are recognised as a feature of clinical depression. A previous meta-analytic review assessing how OGM predicts the course of subsequent depressive symptoms showed small effects for correlations and regression analyses when baseline depressive symptoms were controlled for. We aimed to update this study and examine whether their findings replicate given the decade of research that has been published since. A systematic literature review using the same eligibility criteria as the previous meta-analysis led to a doubling of eligible studies (32 v. 15). The results provided more precise estimates of effect sizes, and largely support the finding that OGM predicts the course of depressive symptoms. The effects were generally small, but significantly larger among clinical samples, compared to studies with non-clinical samples. There was some evidence that higher age was associated with stronger effects, and longer follow-up was associated with weaker effects. The findings on other moderating variables that were analysed were mixed. Continued research into this modifiable cognitive process may help to provide an avenue to better understand and treat highly prevalent and impactful depressive disorders.

Improving Usual Care Outcomes in Major Depression in Youth by Targeting Memory Specificity: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Adjunct Computerised Memory Specificity Training (c-MeST)

“…This is consistent with mediation effects showing changes in memory specificity predicting later depressive symptoms in our previous trial of c-MeST in MDD (Hallford, Austin, et al, 2021b) and in an earlier study of face-to-face MeST in depressed adolescents (Neshat-Doost et al, 2013). This is also consistent with meta-analytic findings of longitudinal research that show higher memory specificity does predict later lower depressive symptoms in clinical depression (Hallford, Rusanov, et al, 2021a). The marginally nonsignificant indirect effect in the current study may be due to the smaller dose of c-MeST and smaller change in memory specificity relative to the previous trial.…”

“…Depressed individuals, relative to non-depressed, more often fail to recall memories of event-specific experiences that occurred within the space of a day; instead providing memories of experiences that extended over longer periods of time, categories of repeated events, or abstractions of various experiences. This impairment, termed overgeneral memory (OGM) or reduced autobiographical memory specificity (rAMS), occurs for memories of positive, negative, and neutral valence (Liu et al, 2013), and is a significant predictor of whether depressive symptoms will decrease or increase over time among those with MDD (Hallford, Rusanov, et al, 2021a) Over the past decade, researchers and clinicians have developed ways of improving memory specificity in those with depression. One of these interventions, Memory Specificity Training (MeST), engages people in sustained practice recalling specific autobiographical memories.…”

A Cross-Lagged Prospective Network Analysis of Depression and Anxiety and Cognitive Functioning Components in Midlife Community Adult Women

“…Findings concur with ideas that heightened depression and anxiety are maintained by negativity biases in non-social and social realms (e.g., attributing hostility in others despite ambiguous or contrary evidence), and chronic sense of social disconnectedness (Wilde, Gillies, & Dozois, 2021). The results also align with notions that salient features of anxiety and depressive disorders include decreased specificity in autobiographical memory (Hallford, Rusanov, Yeow, & Barry, 2021) and deficits in social cognition and various neurocognitive domains, including rate of processing (Nikolin et al, 2021;Zainal & Newman, 2020). Noteworthy is that these attributes are likely to be present in diverse types of major neurocognitive disorders during midlife and late adulthood.…”

Autobiographical memory impairments as a transdiagnostic feature of mental illness: A meta-analytic review of investigations into autobiographical memory specificity and overgenerality among people with psychiatric diagnoses.

“…Autobiographical memory specificity/overgenerality represents one such transdiagnostic mechanism, especially given early evidence of its presence across a range of diagnoses (Williams et al, 2007), meta-analytical evidence that it can lead to a maintenance or worsening of symptoms over time (Hallford et al, 2021), and evidence that interventions that target it can also influence symptoms, albeit temporarily (Barry, Sze, & Raes, 2019). It is also possible that problems with autobiographical memory specificity may interfere with other seemingly unrelated therapies, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, in so far as these therapies are themselves autobiographical experiences that must be retrieved if treatment gains are to be realized (Harvey et al, 2014; Hitchcock, Rudokaite, et al, 2019).…”