DEPRESSION AND MEMORY NARRATIVE TYPE

Research with autobiographical memories has distinguished between memo ry narratives of specific events and summaries of many events blended together. Depression has been associated with a reduced ability to ret rieve and orally relate specific positive memories. This study explore d the hedonic bias in memory through collection of written autobiograp hical memories from 90 nonclinical college students whose mood was ass essed for depression. Participants with higher depression scores recal led significantly more summary memories in response to a request for a positive self-defining memory than did participants with lower depres sion scores. There were no significant differences in the number of si ngle-event and summary memories when participants were asked for a neg ative memory. We used J. A. Singer and K. H. Moffitt's (1991-1992) sco ring system to distinguish between summarized and specific memory narr atives.