Center for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology, University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan.
Psychiatry Res. 2017 Feb;248:56-63. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2016.12.019. Epub 2016 Dec 16.
The autobiographical memory test (AMT) is a widely used measure to assess the specificity of autobiographical memories. Reduced Autobiographical Memory Specificity (AMS) or increased overgeneralization of memories is considered as a cognitive hallmark of depression. Therefore, reduced AMS is the subject of much psychopathological research, and is a promising target for psychological interventions. Although considerable evidence has been gathered on the clinical relevance of reduced AMS over the past decades, studies on AMS have been mainly conducted in Western populations, and few have been conducted in Asian populations. This could be because of the unknown psychometric properties of the AMT given cultural and language differences. Therefore, the present study examined the psychometric properties of the AMT in a Japanese community sample (N=1240). Our data replicated that (a) the AMT has a uni-factorial structure; (b) AMS has a small but statistically significant negative correlation with depressive symptoms; (c) AMS shows a significant declining trend as a function of age, which influences the magnitude of the association between AMS and depressive symptoms in older adults. These findings suggest that the AMT has robust psychometric properties across different languages and cultural backgrounds.
自传体记忆测试（AMT）是一种广泛用于评估自传体记忆特异性的测量方法。自传体记忆特异性降低（AMS）或记忆过度泛化被认为是抑郁症的认知标志。因此，降低的 AMS 是精神病理学研究的主要课题，也是心理干预的有前途的目标。尽管在过去几十年中已经积累了大量关于降低 AMS 的临床相关性的证据，但对 AMS 的研究主要在西方人群中进行，在亚洲人群中进行的研究很少。这可能是由于文化和语言差异导致 AMT 的心理计量学特性未知。因此，本研究在日本社区样本（N=1240）中检验了 AMT 的心理计量学特性。我们的数据复制了以下结果：（a）AMT 具有单一因素结构；（b）AMS 与抑郁症状呈小但具有统计学意义的负相关；（c）AMS 随着年龄的增长呈显著下降趋势，这影响了 AMS 与老年人抑郁症状之间关联的大小。这些发现表明，AMT 在不同语言和文化背景下具有可靠的心理计量学特性。
