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Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders and Disasters

Forgetting to Heal: Post-traumatic stress, depression, and autobiographical memory

(PS4-C63) Forgetting to Heal: Post-traumatic Stress, Depression, and Autobiographical Memory

Friday, November 18, 2022

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM EST

Location: Westside Ballroom, 5th Floor

Author(s)

EP

Emma PeConga, M.S.

Graduate Student
University of Washington, Seattle
Seattle, Washington

Co-Author(s)

HB

Heather Benjamin, B.A.

Research Assistant
University of Washington, Seattle
Seattle, Washington
AH

Alissa Hirata, B.S.

Research Assistant
University of Washington, Seattle
Seattle, Washington
LZ

Lori A. Zoellner, Ph.D.

Professor
University of Washington, Seattle
Seattle, Washington

Cognitive models of mental disorders suggest that memory processing deficits may play a role in the etiology of depression (Williams et al., 2007) and post-traumatic stress disorder (Moore & Zoellner, 2007). This prospective longitudinal study examined the relations between depression, PTSD, autobiographical memory specificity, and autobiographical memory narrative consistency. Female undergraduates (N=70) completed an online battery at baseline and one month follow-up that included the autobiographical memory task (AMT; Williams, et al., 2006) and a novel narrative consistency task in which participants asked to write two narratives: one “extremely negative” and one “extremely positive” experience within the last year. This qualitatively-coded measure of narrative consistency was developed to address the lack of qualitatively coded measures of narrative consistency. To score this task, raters coded number of baseline “major plot points,” the number of these plot points that again appeared at 1-month follow up, and the number of novel major plot points that appeared at 1-month follow up. “Consistency” was then calculated by the following equation: (#Baseline plot points at T2/ #Baseline plot points) – (#Novel plot points at T2/ #Baseline plot points). Participants responded to standardized questions about the event (e.g., “what day of the week did the event take place?”). Additionally, participants completed measures of post-traumatic stress (PTSD; PDS; Foa et al., 2016) and depression symptoms (QIDS-SR; Rush et al., 2003). A bivariate correlation confirmed that the novel memory narrative consistency task correlated with other commonly used measures of consistency: a percentile ranking of subjective consistency (p = -0.85, p< 0.00), a Likert scale of detail change over time (p = -0.81, p < 0.00), and a subjective categorical yes/ no consistency rating (p= -0.42 p < 0.00). Each of these consistency measures were double-rater coded with high inter-rater reliability (96%). Interestingly, PTSD symptomology (β = 0.47, < ![if !supportAnnotations] >[EP1]< ![endif] > p = 0.05), driven by the avoidance subscale (β = 0.61, p < 0.01), predicted negative but not positive narrative consistency across the two time points. Further, depression symptom severity predicted more overgeneral autobiographical memory (i.e., low AMT scores) at baseline and 1-month follow-up (Baseline: β = -0.27, p = 0.04; 1-month: β = -0.33, p = 0.02). These results add support to the hypothesis that psychopathology may be related to specific disruptions in autobiographical memory (Zoellner & Moore, 2007). Specifically, this study further supports theories that depression is characterized by overgeneral memory processing style (See Williams, 2007) while individuals with PTSD may have particularly consistent memories of negative events, adding to the research showing this effect using trauma narratives (Zoellner et al., 2001).