Contribution of the depressive perspective to memory function in depression

Abstract

The authors used a story recall paradigm to elucidate some aspects of the memory problems of depressive patients. They compared 21 hospitalized depressed patients with a matched group of control subjects for recall of a theme story containing material with positive, negative, and neutral affective tones. The results indicated an overall deficit in the story recall of the depressed patients, most of which could be ascribed to a decrement in recall of the positive themes in the story. Recall of the negative and neutral themes remained intact. These results are consistent with the view that a depressive perspective contributes one component to the memory difficulties of depressed patients.