Bp. Bradley et al., IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT MEMORY FOR EMOTION-CONGRUENT INFORMATION IN CLINICAL DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, Behaviour research and therapy, 33(7), 1995, pp. 755-770
Implicit and explicit memory biases were assessed in clincially depres
sed (n = 19), clinically anxious (n = 17), and normal control (n = 18)
Ss. The implicit memory test was a primed lexical decision task, with
anxiety- and depression-relevant words, and suprathreshold and subthr
eshold primes. The explicit memory test was incidental free recall of
self-referenced words. The depressed group showed greater suprathresho
ld and subthreshold priming effects for depression words, and recalled
more depression words, than the other two groups. These results sugge
st that clinical depression, but not clinical anxiety, is associated w
ith mood-congruent biases in both automatic and strategic memory proce
sses.