Cataldo Andrea M, Sanders D Merika W, Granger Steven J, Starns Jeffrey J, Dillon Daniel G
Center for Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Research, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA.
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
Comput Brain Behav. 2025 Jun 20. doi: 10.1007/s42113-025-00252-w.
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is associated with emotional memory deficits, but treatment is limited by a poor understanding of the mechanisms that drive such behavior. Our previous work linked depression to a negative retrieval bias rooted in abnormal evidence accumulation (Cataldo et al., 2023). The Drift Diffusion Model can account for this bias in two ways: increased familiarity, in which depression strengthens evidence for all negative memories-even false ones; or motivated retrieval, in which depression increases the propensity to judge negative items as "old"-even if they are weak. Thus, it is unclear whether depression affects the quality of negative memories or the way they are acted upon. The current work distinguishes these accounts via the Parceling Recognition Into Strength and Motivation (PRISM) task, which isolates memory from decision processes by extending single-item recognition to forced choices between targets and lures (Starns et al., 2018). Though motivation to respond "old" can bias single-item judgments, it should play little or no role when judging item is old; thus, familiarity is implicated when valence effects extend across both tasks, and motivation is implicated when they do not. In a sample of 53 adults ranging in depressive severity, we found that the negative retrieval bias extended across single-item and forced-choice recognition, thus supporting false familiarity. A qualitative analysis of participants' self-reported strategies further indicated that increased schema use may be an important mechanism. In sum, we provide critical evidence that the negative retrieval bias in depressed adults results from disrupted memory representations.
重度抑郁症（MDD）与情绪记忆缺陷有关，但由于对导致这种行为的机制了解不足，治疗受到限制。我们之前的研究将抑郁症与源于异常证据积累的负性提取偏差联系起来（Cataldo等人，2023年）。漂移扩散模型可以通过两种方式解释这种偏差：增强熟悉度，即抑郁症会强化所有负面记忆的证据——即使是错误的记忆；或动机性提取，即抑郁症会增加将负面项目判断为“旧”的倾向——即使它们很微弱。因此，尚不清楚抑郁症是影响负面记忆的质量还是影响对它们的处理方式。当前的研究通过“将识别分解为强度和动机”（PRISM）任务区分了这些解释，该任务通过将单项识别扩展到目标与诱饵之间的强制选择，将记忆与决策过程分离（Starns等人，2018年）。虽然回答“旧”的动机可能会使单项判断产生偏差，但在判断项目是否为“旧”时，它应该几乎不发挥作用或不起作用；因此，当效价效应在两个任务中都存在时，涉及熟悉度，而当它们不存在时，则涉及动机。在一个包含53名抑郁严重程度各异的成年人的样本中，我们发现负性提取偏差在单项和强制选择识别中都存在，从而支持了错误熟悉度。对参与者自我报告策略的定性分析进一步表明，增加图式的使用可能是一个重要机制。总之，我们提供了关键证据，证明抑郁成年人的负性提取偏差是由记忆表征中断导致的。
