The authors used a story recall paradigm to elucidate some aspects of
the memory problems of depressive patients. They compared 21 hospitalized
depressed patients with a matched group of control subjects for recall of a
theme story containing material with positive, negative, and neutral
affective tones. The results indicated an overall deficit in the story
recall of the depressed patients, most of which could be ascribed to a
decrement in recall of the positive themes in the story. Recall of the
negative and neutral themes remained intact. These results are consistent
with the view that a depressive perspective contributes one component to
the memory difficulties of depressed patients.Abstract Teaser