Validation of the face-name pairs task in major depression: impaired recall but not recognition

Everyday memory in patients with depression: An explorative pilot study using an ecological assessment paradigm

BACKGROUND

People with major depressive disorder (MDD) often experience significant memory problems in their daily lives, which, however, frequently do not correspond to standardized memory test (SMT) results. The present pilot study aimed to examine the everyday memory performance of people with MDD by means of an ecological assessment paradigm (EAP).

METHODS

Participants were unexpectedly called one week after their neuropsychological test assessment and asked about their memories of specific details of the former test situation. Associations of this EAP with SMT, subjective everyday memory problems, and symptom coping were exploratively analyzed.

RESULTS

The study involved 22 MDD inpatients (M = 42.5 years, 64% female) and 22 comparable healthy control persons. MDD patients showed a significantly reduced performance in the EAP as well as in the SMT and they reported more memory problems in their daily lives. However, the EAP was not related to SMT results assessed a week before. Moreover, only the EAP was significantly associated with subjective daily memory problems and (distraction) coping style in the MDD group.

CONCLUSIONS

The EAP appears to better reflect the everyday memory problems of persons with depression than standardized test procedures. However, the findings need to be validated by further research with larger samples.

Depression and episodic memory across the adult lifespan: A meta-analytic review

Episodic memory deficits have increasingly been recognized as a cognitive feature of depression. To quantify these deficits and determine how they are moderated by various tasks (e.g., stimulus valence) and participant (e.g., age, depression diagnosis) variables, we conducted a three-level meta-analysis on 995 effect sizes derived from 205 studies with 236 unique comparisons between depressive and control groups on episodic memory measures. Overall, depression was associated with small to moderate deficits in episodic memory, Hedges' g = -0.36, 95% CI [-0.41 to -0.31]. Effects were larger in older age, in diagnosed compared to subthreshold depression, and in those taking medication for depression; effects did not differ between those with current and remitted symptoms. Stimulus valence moderated the effects, such that depression-related deficits were particularly pronounced for positive and neutral stimuli, but not for negative stimuli. Educational attainment served as a sort of protective factor, in that at higher levels of education, depressed group performance was more similar to that of controls. These findings confirm the episodic memory deficits in depression but highlight the important differences in the size of these deficits across a number of task- and participant-related variables. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Memory deficits in patients with major depression: yes, they are trying hard enough!

Background: Cognitive impairment is a common symptom of patients with Major Depression (MDD) with negative clinical and social effects. With this study we investigated the question of whether MDD patients' effort to memorize items is reduced and whether this reduction is related to patients' memory impairment.Research design and methods: Twenty-two patients with MDD and 28 healthy control participants took part in the study. Both groups did not differ with respect to age, gender, and basic education. MDD was confirmed by the Mini Diagnostic Interview for Mental Disorders (Mini-DIPS). Willingness to make an effort was assessed by the Amsterdam Short-Term Memory Test (ASTM). Logical Memory (LM) from the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS IV) was used to assess verbal memory.Results: With respect to the willingness to make an effort, all MDD-patients performed above the cutoff and did not perform worse than healthy control participants. Depression appears to have a negative impact on recall and recognition of verbal information, but the effect on recall was larger.Conclusions: These findings support studies indicating no motivational deficits in patients with depression during standardized neuropsychological testing. Reduced motivation is not a plausible explanation for depressive patients' cognitive deficits assessed with neuropsychological tests.