Directed forgetting and memory bias for emotion-congruent information in clinical depression

We compared depressed and control participants on a directed forgetting tas k using depressive, threatening, positive, and neutral words. Items were pr esented one at a time, and immediately followed by the instruction either t o remember or to forget the word. All participants then performed a free re call task and a recognition task on all previously presented words. Depress ed participants were similar to controls in their response patterns, except for an overall impairment in recognition performance. We discuss these res ults in the light of Bower's associative network (1981), Beck's cognitive t heory (1967, 1979), and Williams, Watts, MacLeod, and Mathews's theory (198 8, 1997).