THE DISSOCIATION OF EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT MEMORY IN DEPRESSED-PATIENTS

Twenty-three in-patients fulfilling DSM-II-R criteria for major depres sive disorder were submitted to a standard cued recall test, and to a word-stem completion test devised to assess the effect of the initial presentation without the explicit retrieval of the words being necessa ry. Results show that depressed patients are impaired on the cued reca ll task in comparison with controls matched for sex, age, and educatio nal level. However, the two groups do not differ in the word-stem comp letion task. This dissociation between explicit and implicit expressio ns of memory disappeared when patients recovered, although they were s till hospitalized and under psychotropic medication. These results are examined in the light of the distinction between effortful and automa tic processes.