尽管研究结果表明,抑郁症患者的个人记忆以稀疏的情节细节为特征,在某些情况下,相反的模式出现了。具体来说,最近的一项研究(Salmon等人。,2021)表明,对于社区青年来说,在高度自我相关的叙述(人生转折点)中更多的情节细节预测抑郁症状同时和一年后增加。在一项针对年轻人的新纵向研究中(时间1时N=320,M=16.9岁;81%为女性),随访6个月以上,我们旨在复制和扩展这一发现。在研究A中,我们将转折点与关于冲突事件的叙述进行了比较,确定转折点记忆中的细节是否唯一地预测了抑郁症状。支持第一个假设,在这两个时间点,更多的情节细节与抑郁症状同时呈正相关,仅在转折点叙述中.与我们的第二个假设相反,更多细节并不能纵向预测抑郁症状增加.反向模式很明显,然而,在六个月后的转折点叙述中,更大的初始抑郁症状预测了更多的细节。在研究B中,我们确定,在转折点(而非冲突事件)中,情景细节和抑郁症状之间的并发关联因自我聚焦的语言标记(I-talk更大,距离更低)而加剧.这些发现表明,当年轻人以高度的自我专注来叙述经历时,转折点叙事中的更多细节可能独特地表示心理困扰的风险。
Although research findings show that the personal memories of people who are depressed are characterized by sparse episodic detail, under some circumstances, the opposite pattern emerges. Specifically, a recent study (Salmon et al., 2021) has shown that for community youth, greater episodic detail in a highly self-relevant narrative (a life turning point) predicted increased depressive symptoms concurrently and one year later. In a new longitudinal study of young people (N = 320 at Time 1, M = 16.9 years; 81% female) followed up over six months, we aimed to replicate and extend this finding. In Study A, we compared the turning point with a narrative about a conflict event, to establish whether the detail in a turning point memory uniquely predicted depressive symptoms. Supporting the first hypothesis, at both time-points, greater episodic detail was concurrently positively associated with depressive symptoms for turning point narratives only. Contrary to our second hypothesis, greater detail did not predict increased depressive symptoms longitudinally. The reverse pattern was significant, however, in that greater initial depressive symptoms predicted greater detail uniquely in the turning point narrative six months later. In Study B, we determined that the concurrent association between episodic detail and depressive symptoms in turning points (but not conflict events) was exacerbated by linguistic markers of self-focus (greater I-talk and lower distancing language). These findings suggest that greater detail in a turning point narrative may uniquely signify risk of psychological distress when youth narrate the experience with heightened self-focus.