Discussion
depression, depressed, depressive symptoms
EVENTS
Previous work has examined the impact of self-compassion on a variety of cognitive processes associated with depressogenic thinking. The current study extends this work to examine if a loving-kindness meditation can influence autobiographical memory patterns in remitted depression when negative thinking about the self is deliberately activated. The current study aimed to assess whether a brief LKM, in comparison to a colouring practice, would influence features of AM retrieval (specificity, remoteness, vantage perspective, valence) after inducing cognitive reactivity in remitted depression. We further aimed to identify whether baseline tendencies in a remitted depressed sample would show more remote as opposed to recent memory retrieval and whether positive-specific memories would be retrieved more remotely than recently.The effects of both interventions on depressive symptoms and characteristics were assessed. Changes in negative affect (DASS), depression (DASS depression), and self-compassion (SCS) over time were inconclusive and there were no significant group differences in changes in negative affect or depression. However, results regarding group differences in changes in self-compassion were inconclusive. Alternatively, while rumination (RRS), experienced self-discrepancies, and focused self-discrepancies did improve over time, results were inconclusive regarding differences in improvement between groups.Findings supported our hypothesis that total memory specificity would increase over time in the LKM group only. However, an anomalous finding was also observed where rumination positively correlated with specificity and both specificity and rumination improved over time. This finding might be due to the sample desiring to perform well on the AMT possibly as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, it might be that due to drastic pandemic-related changes in teaching methodology at the university, participants had higher levels of perfectionism that resulted in better performance (i.e. specificity) on the AMT while negative affect remained higher and self-compassion remained lower. While this is speculative, as measures of perfectionism were not obtained, the relationship between rumination and specificity might vary depending upon personality factors which could be a further consideration in future studies. Despite this surprising correlation, specificity at baseline was low in this sample overall, consistent with previous literature [Our hypothesis that the LKM group would retrieve more positive-specific memories over time in comparison to the colouring group was not supported given results were inconclusive. While LKM might have altered the way events were perceived, such that memories previously perceived as neutral could have been shifted to a positive valence, the colouring practice might have distracted participants from more negative memories, making positive memories more readily available. Further analyses were inconclusive regarding greater increase in recent positive-specific than remote positive-specific memories in the LKM group (free-recall condition). Although this does not support our hypothesis, given the LKM group did not show a baseline tendency to retrieve more remote positive-specific memories, this finding is not surprising.Further, results were inconclusive regarding the retrieval of more specific-field memories over time and regarding a group interaction, contrary to predictions. Moreover, it was unclear whether an increased retrieval of positive-field memories depended upon group. Given literature has demonstrated a tendency for healthy samples to use field perspective for positive memories and observer perspective for negative memories [At baseline, it was hypothesised that more remote memories would be retrieved than recent memories given a focus on self-discrepancies was activated; however, this prediction was not supported. Although cognitive reactivity was successfully induced, it might be that focused self-discrepancies were not sufficiently high to necessitate retrieval of remote memories to distance oneself from recent memories that painfully highlight current discrepancies. While the current study did not compare remoteness tendencies of the remitted depressed sample to that of a never-depressed sample, our remitted sample did reveal a similar average age of memories to that found in dysphoria [A trend in significance for self-discrepancies to mediate the changes in retrieval of positive-specific memories was revealed in the LKM group only. However, changes in self-discrepancies were not found to mediate changes in specificity or retrieval of specific-field memories in the LKM group contrary to expectations. Given the number of Bayes Factors that indicated inconclusive data however, it could be that data are too uncertain to draw conclusions about self-discrepancies mediating changes in specificity or specific-field memories. At this point, it is unclear what mechanisms of LKM influenced changes in features of AM retrieval. Thus, the next steps in line with this research would be to focus on elucidating mechanisms of change.Our findings have implications for developing treatments to alter features of AM retrieval in remitted depression and reducing a cognitive vulnerability to depression. The current study demonstrated significant improvement in specificity, valence, and vantage perspective, whereas previous treatments have largely focused on single or dual features of AM retrieval in interventions. For example, Memory Specificity Training (MEST) explicitly teaches participants in group sessions [