The results of the study are shown in Figure 16.6. As predicted, depressed
patients remembered the depression-associated words better, whereas two
groups of nondepressed participants recalled the other words better. Thisfinding has been replicated with clinically depressed patients (Lim & Kim,
2005) and mildly depressed college students (Moilanen, 1993). Depressed
people recall words like dismal and helpless better because they process these
words through a depressive schema. They are more likely to attend to the
depression-related words, associate them with aspects of themselves, and
readily recall them later on.
If depressed people process information through a depressive schema, we
would also expect them to recall sad memories more readily than people whoare not depressed. If I ask you to quickly think of something that happened toyou in high school, most likely you will think of a pleasant time. You might
recall a star performance in a play or perhaps just the fun you had hanging
out with friends. But if you are a little depressed today, you might instead re-
call a test you failed or a time you were rejected by friends. This is because
people processing information through a depressive schema have greater ac-
cess to the depressing memories stored there. When you are depressed, it
should not take long to recall times when you were sad, lonely, or embar-
rassed because using a depressive schema makes these memories readily
accessible.
This easy access to sad memories was demonstrated in an experiment
with depressed clients (Clark & Teasdale, 1982). Clients were given a series10203040Percentage of Words Recalled
Depressed
PatientsNondepressed
PatientsNondepressed
NormalsDepression-
Associated Words
Nondepression-
Associated Words
FIGURE 16.6 Proportion of Self-Descriptive Words Recalled with
Self-Referent Processing
Source: From “Schematic processing and self-reference in clinical depression, ”by P. A. Derry and N. A. Kuiper,
Journal of Abnormal Psychology , 1981, 90, 286 –297.Cognitions and Depression 447