SynthesisClinical psychology & psychotherapy2022
Reduced specificity and increased overgenerality of autobiographical memory persist as cognitive vulnerabilities in remitted major depression: A meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Clinical psychology & psychotherapy, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neural systems underlying autobiographical memory dysregulations in depression: A neuroimaging meta-analysis.Psychological medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Reduced specificity and increased overgenerality of autobiographical memory persist as cognitive vulnerabilities in remitted major depression: A meta-analysis.Clinical psychology & psychotherapy · 2022Pooled it
- Cognitive Specificity Enhancement Training (CoST) in depressed patients with a history of childhood maltreatment: a pilot study on the feasibility and efficacy of CoST for reducing rumination, cognitive avoidance, and depressive symptoms.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Trial
- Increasing autobiographical memory specificity: Using kindness meditation to impact features of memory retrieval.PloS one · 2023Trial
- The intrinsic excitability of and autophagy protein expression levels in dentate gyrus ensembles regulate fear generalization.Neural regeneration research · 2026Article
- Parents' Positive Childhood Experiences: A Scoping Review.Adversity and resilience science · 2026Review
- Autobiographical narratives in major depression: changes in memory specificity during outpatient psychodynamic psychotherapy.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Narrative Review of the Complex Interaction between Pain and Trauma in Children: A Focus on Biological Memory, Preclinical Data, and Epigenetic Processes.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Effects of reminiscence therapy combined with memory specificity training (RT-MeST) on depressive symptoms in older adults: a randomized controlled trial protocol.BMC geriatrics · 2023Article
- Depression and suicide: What an evidence-based clinician should know.Clinical psychology & psychotherapy · 2022Article
- The influence of electroconvulsive therapy on reconsolidation of autobiographical memories: A retrospective quasi-experimental study in patients with depression.International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHPArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Difficulty in accessing specific memories, referred to as reduced memory specificity or overgeneral memory (OGM), has been established as a marker of clinical depression. However, it is not clear if this deficit persists following the remission of depressive episodes. The current study involved a systematic review and meta-analysis of empirical studies with the aim of establishing whether remitted depression was associated with retrieving fewer specific and more overgeneral autobiographical memories. Seventeen studies were identified as eligible. The results indicated that people with remitted depression recalled fewer specific memories (k = 15; g = -0.314, 95% CI [-0.543; -0.085], z = -2.69, p = .007) and more categoric memories (k = 9; g = 0.254, 95% CI [0.007; 0.501], z = 2.02, p = .043) compared to people who had never been depressed. Given these deficits have elsewhere been shown to be prognostic of future depressive symptoms, these findings suggest that reduced memory specificity/overgeneral memory persists following remission and may be a risk factor for future episodes of depression in those that are in remission. The findings are discussed in terms of how this knowledge might influence clinical understanding of relapse prevention and maintenance of remission in those with a history of depression.
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