| Abstract: | Examined both hedonic and nonhedonic aspects of autobiographical memory in 25 patients (mean age 31 yrs) who had recently attempted suicide by overdose, 25 hospital patients (clinical nonoverdose controls), and 25 Ss recruited from the authors' S panel (panel controls). Ss completed the Profile of Mood States, an autobiographical memory test, and semantic memory tasks. Results indicate that attempted-suicide Ss, who were required to retrieve specific personal memories to positive or negative cue words, showed biased retrieval when their performance was compared with that of control groups, but the bias was due to delayed retrieval of positive memories rather than to speeded retrieval of negative memories. At least part of this effect was due to inappropriate retrieval strategies that yielded general, rather than specific, memories in the overdose group, a finding that may have implications for associative network models of emotional memory. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
