Unraveling the role of retrieval deficits in autobiographical memory impairment in schizophrenia: A comparison of involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories

Abstract

Patients with schizophrenia show severe autobiographical memory impairment, thought to reflect retrieval deficits caused by executive dysfunction. However, prior research has focused exclusively on strategic (voluntary) retrieval, and ignored involuntary retrieval resulting from automatic and associative processes, involving minimal cognitive control. We report two studies with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, (Ns= 40 and 50 respectively) comparing their impairment in involuntary versus voluntary autobiographical memory. We use two different methodologies, not previously used in schizophrenia research: a naturalistic study involving real-life data and an experimental setup. Both studies consistently showed that involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories were similarly impaired in schizophrenia. The absence of interaction effects between group and retrieval suggests that schizophrenic patients did not benefit from memory tasks involving little retrieval effort.These findings suggest that autobiographical memory impairment in schizophrenia are not caused by problems with self-initiated voluntary retrieval, but instead likely reflect encoding or binding deficits.

Autobiographical memory impairment in chronic schizophrenia: Significance and clinical correlates

“…In the aforementioned study by Potheegadoo et al (2014), a specific cueing method improved patients´ ability to recall some, but not all categories of details, therefore suggesting a poor encoding of those details, that remained without benefit by retrieval cues. Moreover, in another recent study the comparison between involuntary and voluntary retrieval of AM revealed a similar impairment of patients in both conditions (Allé et al, 2021). Considering voluntary retrieval as effortful process involving executive functions and involuntary retrieval as a rather automatic process, results argue against solely retrieval problems but rather point to encoding deficits.…”

Mental time travel in psychiatric disorders

“…Relatively few studies have investigated 'involuntary MTT,' for which past or future events are spontaneously generated when participants are engaged with other tasks. For instance, two recent studies investigated involuntary MTT in patients with schizophrenia (Allé et al, 2020(Allé et al, , 2021. Therefore, future research should compare voluntary and involuntary MTT in psychiatric patients, and conduct cross-diagnosis comparisons of MTT.…”

The cognitive characteristics of music‐evoked autobiographical memories: Evidence from a systematic review of clinical investigations

“…As overgeneral memory is a common finding in people with depression (Williams et al, 2007), it would be interesting for future studies to examine whether music can improve this, especially in lieu of the improvements in specificity found in AD. Many other clinical disorders such as schizophrenia (Allé et al, 2021), posttraumatic stress disorder (Ono et al, 2016), and Borderline personality disorder (Van den Broeck et al, 2015) also have AM‐related issues where it could be relevant to investigate MEAMs.…”