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Autobiographical memory in obsessive‐compulsive disorder
Author(s) -
Wilhelm Sabine,
McNally Richard J.,
Baer Lee,
Florin Irmela
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
british journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0144-6657
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1997.tb01227.x
Subject(s) - autobiographical memory , psychology , valence (chemistry) , obsessive compulsive , anxiety , depression (economics) , cognition , anxiety disorder , clinical psychology , psychiatry , developmental psychology , physics , quantum mechanics , macroeconomics , economics
Patients with obsessive‐compulsive disorder (OCD) ( N = 36) and healthy controls ( N = 24) participated in an autobiographical memory experiment in which they were asked to retrieve specific personal memories in response to cue words having either positive (e.g. happy) or negative (e.g. anxiety) valence. Compared to control participants, OCD patients had difficulty retrieving specific memories and showed longer retrieval latencies. However, these overgenerality effects were not a function of OCD per se , but were related to a co‐morbid diagnosis of major depression. The difficulty in retrieving specific autobiographical memories exhibited by OCD patients might reflect excessive cognitive capacity consumption due to preoccupation with intrusive thoughts typical of major depression.