Lecture 1 - memory and depression

Question 1

emotion through participant

state emotion

Answer 1

normal participants experience temporary emotional arousal

Question 2

emotion through participant

trait emotion

Answer 2

participants have chronic emotional arousal and chronic preoccupation

Question 3

interaction paradigm in understanding emotions in partcipants

Answer 3

interaction between emtional content of material used to induce emotion and the emotional state of the participants
= a powerful paradigm

Question 4

two most common emotional disorders

Answer 4

anxiety

depression

Question 5

cognitive features of depression and anxiety

Answer 5

anxiety - attentional phenomena

depression - memory phenomena

Question 6

preoccupations of people with depression and anxiety

Answer 6

anxious patients - preoccupied with situations where panic

depressed patients - preoccupied with falure or times let others down

Question 7

name 4 cognitive biases

Answer 7

attentional bias
interpretative bias
explicit memory bias
implicit memory bias

Question 8

explain why preoccupations occur (3 steps)

Answer 8

Emotional disorders increase extent to which people notice stressful events
emotional disorders increase effect of these events on cognitive functioning
emotional disorders increase frequency with which these events are recalled

Question 9

two most important cognitive theories

Answer 9

Beck - cognitive schema and depression (Beck, rush, shaw and emery, 1979)
bower’s networ theory (bower 1981)

Question 10

explain Beck and Clark 1988 Schemata

- to the depressed

Answer 10

schematic organization of clinically depressed = overhelmingly negative
depressed person’s view of the world, selg and future = a negative cognitive bias

Question 11

explain Beck and Clark 1988 Schemata

- to the anxious

Answer 11

perceived phycial or psychological threat to one’s personal domain as well as an exaggerated sense of vulnerability

Question 12

what are schemata

Answer 12

cognitive structures that influence a person’s perceptions, interpretations and memories

Question 13

in sum depressive and anxious schemata

Answer 13

depression schemata - negative view of self, world and future
anxiety schemata - vulnerabioity and danger

Question 14

explain bower’s network theory

Answer 14

based on human associative memory netowrk theory (anderson and bower 1973)
each distinct emotion has a specific node in memory that joins other aspects of emotion to it by associative pointers

Question 15

explain depression

Answer 15

mood disorder
combination of elements (ie not just feeling a bit blue)
MDD - persistent low mood plus other physical and mentla states such as poor sleeping patters, poor eating habits, impaired concentration, feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness
two weeks minimum
depressed state must creat interference with the execution of daily activities

Question 16

mood and memory processes - what states can we be in

Answer 16

mood congruent recall
mood congruent encoding
mood state dependent learning

Question 17

does mood have the same impact on explicit vs imolicit memory

Answer 17

explicit - involves elaborative processing

implicit - spontaneous automatic processing

Question 18

explain implicit memory

Answer 18

use of memory in which some previous experience influences performance without any conscious recollection of that experience
eg rate words then word fragment completion task

Question 19

explain explicit memory

Answer 19

use of memory requiring the conscious recollection of experiences
eg list as many positive experiences in the last month you can

Question 20

jacoby and dalla (1981) study on there is a dissociation between implicit and explicit memory

Answer 20

variable may influence explicit but not implicit processing
found judegement task about words (structural vs semantic) influences subsequent recognition performance (explicit) but not perceptual identification (implicit)
elaborative processing influences only explicit memory

Question 21

implications of implicit / explicit distinction for memory

Answer 21

if self-schema information receives greater elaborative processing, than explicit memory bias expected but not implicit memory bias
if self-schema information if pre-attneitvely filtered than an implicit bias is expected

Question 22

5 reasons why studying depression and memory is important

Answer 22

memory influences social problem solving
memory influence the way the future is viewed
memory influence judgements and decision making
memory contributes to schema biases
memory contributes to emotion regulation