False memories occur in all individuals, including those with superior memory capabilities, as a result of a flawed reconstructive process. They can seep into one’s consciousness as detailed and vivid memories through multiple mechanisms, namely, exposure to misleading and suggestive post-event information, imagination, cognitive errors, and so on (Patihis et al., 2013; Otgaar, Ruiter, Howe, Hoetmer, & Reekum, 2016). According to Conway and Loveday (2015), memories are considered true and accurate when they are coherent and correspondent with each other. However, distorted and false coherence memories are common among people suffering from severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In them, false memories may be evoked due to impaired emotional perception and reconstruction supported through cognitive distortions. For instance, Otgaar, Muris, Howe, and Merckelbach (2017) observe that people with PTSD and depression “tend to recollect emotionally negative experiences better than emotionally positive events..and can exhibit overgeneral memories” (p. 1048). Additionally, Romero, Sanchez, and Vazquez (2014) claim that a depressed mood may activate negative thinking patterns in individuals experiencing depressive episodes in a way that they start to generate memory biases to negative information. Therefore, more false memories are usually recorded in individuals with depression compared to those without the disorder.
The number of studies devoted to the investigation of mood-congruent memory in people with depression and alike conditions remains scarce. The given limitation raises the following question: if the emotional component indeed involved in the reconstruction of false memories and negative associations in patients with depression? The formulated question will be addressed through a comparative study of retrieval of emotional memories in individuals with depression and PTSD and subjects without depression by using the method of literature review. The focus will be made on the research of false memory reconstruction mechanisms, i.e., suggestion-induced false memories and spontaneous false memories; associative activation in memory reconstruction; and the way those mechanisms are performed in people with and without depression. Grounded theory will be employed to analyze the patterns in the collected data. As a result of an inductive process and a narrative synthesis of evidence, a specific theoretical conclusion regarding the mood-congruent memory in depressed individuals will be made.
The proposed study will provide a comparative perspective to current scholarly data on the mechanisms of false memory reconstruction in different population groups. Secondly, the selected methodology, grounded theory, will help reveal some general implications for further research of the problem.
References
Conway, M., & Loveday, C. (2015). Remembering, imagining, false memories & personal meanings. Consciousness and Cognition, 33, 574-581.
Otgaar, H., Muris, P., Howe, M. L., & Merckelbach, H. (2017). What drives false memories in psychopathology? A case for associative activation. Clinical Psychological Science, 5(6), 1048–1069.
Otgaar, H., Ruiter, C. D., Howe, M. L., Hoetmer, L., & Reekum, P. V. (2016). A case concerning children’s false memories of abuse: Recommendations regarding expert witness work. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 24(3), 365-378.
Patihis, L., Frenda, S. J., Leport, A. K., Petersen, N., Nichols, R. M., Stark, C. E.,… Loftus, E. F. (2013). False memories in highly superior autobiographical memory individuals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(52), 20947-20952.
Romero, N., Sanchez, A., & Vazquez, C. (2014). Memory biases in remitted depression: The role of negative cognitions at explicit and automatic processing levels. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 45(1), 128-135.