Specificity of Autobiographical Memory in College Students with Depressive Mood

Objective:To explore the specificity of autobiographical memory in college students with depressive mood.Methods:A total of 500 college students were surveyed by Beck Depression Inventory(BDI) and Self-Rating Depression Scale(SDS).And 120 college students were chosen for further experiment:60 with depressive mood(32 mild,18 moderate and 10 severe) and 60 normal ones.Then they were measured with the Autobiographical Memory test.Results:The scores of specific autobiographical memories of male college students had no significant difference with those of the female ones in memorizing postive and negative cue words(P0.05).The scores of the normal college students were higher than those of the college students with depressive mood,and there existed significant statistical difference between them(P0.01).The scores in memorizing postive cue words were significantly higher than those in memorizing negative cue words in normal college students(P0.01),but not in those with depressive mood(P0.05).The scores of the college students with different depressive moods had significant differences(P0.01):the students with mild depressive mood had higher scores than the students with moderate and severe depressive moods(P0.01),but there was no significant difference between the students with moderate and severe depressive moods(P0.05).Conclusion:The autobiographical memory of college students with depressive mood has deficits,which is mainly manifested as overgenerality.And the specificity of autobiographical memory is associated with the severity of depressive moods.