Autobiographical Memory Specificity in a Community Youth Sample: Relations of Specific and Overgeneral Memories with Rumination, Executive Control, and Depression

Depression is associated with a tendency to recall a greater number of overgeneral memories (OGM) and fewer specific memories. The CaRFAX model (Williams, 2006) poses three mechanisms maintain OGM, but little work has investigated how these mechanisms uniquely relate to OGM beyond the variance they share with each other. There is also a substantial lack of research as to how the mechanisms of the CaRFAX model relate to OGM in typically developing youth, as much research has focused on adult and clinical samples. This study addressed these gaps in the literature by assessing a cross-sectional community youth sample (N = 658) to investigate two mechanisms of the CaRFAX model: executive control and rumination. A written version of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) was used to measure both the number of OGMs and specific memories recalled. Depression was measured with the Child Depression Inventory-2, rumination was measured with a self-report Repetitive Thinking Questionnaire, and executive control was measured with a verbal fluency task and a self-report measure of effortful control; the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire- Revised. Depression had a positive linear relationship with OGM and a negative linear relationship with specific memories. Both relationships were weak and became non-significant after accounting for age. A non-linear cubic positive relationship was found for OGM to negative cues predicting variance in depression. Over and above the shared variance between CaRFAX mechanisms, verbal fluency and effortful control evidenced no relationship with OGM but positively correlated with memory specificity. Conversely, rumination only related to a higher number of OGMs to negative cues. No interactions were found between rumination and executive control. Findings were interpreted with caution due to the small strength of relationships found. It is suggested that the relationships between depression, OGM/memory specificity, and CaRFAX mechanisms may only be clinically meaningful at high levels of psychopathology.