International Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences 2016, 6(2): 82-90 DOI: 10.5923/j.ijpbs.20160602.08 Depression as Indicator of Emotional Regulation: Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory Hwiyeol Jo 1,* , Yohan Moon 2 , Jong In Kim 3 , Jeong Ryu 4 1 Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Seoul National University, South Korea 2 Department of Interactional Science, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea 3 Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science, Seoul National University, South Korea 4 Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, South Korea Abstract Autobiographical memory encompasses our recollection of specific, personal events. In this study, we investigate the relationship between emotion and autobiographical memory, focusing on two broad ways in which these interactions occur. First, the emotional content of an experience can influence the way in which the event is remembered. Second, emotions and emotional goals experienced at the time of autobiographical retrieval can influence the information recalled. We examined the specificity of undergraduate students in autobiographical memory retrieval. Undergraduate students (N=64) completed the Autobiographical Memory Test (J.M.G. Williams & K. Broadbent, 1986), psychological state; depression (Center for Epidemiological Studies – Depression, Radloff, 1977), present affective (Positive Affective and Negative Affective Schedule, Watson et al., 1988) as well as personal factors; life orient (Life Orient Test, Scheier & Carver, 1985), self-awareness (Core Self Evaluation Scale, Judge et al., 2003), social factor (Social Support, Sarason et al., 1983). Results showed that individuals with depression were significantly less specific in retrieving negative experiences, relative to control groups of low depression. This result was restricted to negative memory retrieval, as participants did not differ in memory specificity for less emotional experiences. These results show that repressors retrieve negative autobiographical memories in an overgeneral way, possibly in order to avoid retrieving negative experience. Keywords Autobiographical Memory, Story Grammar, Overgeneral Memory, Emotion, Depression 1. Introduction Autobiographical memory (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000) encompasses our recollection of specific personal events. Autobiographical memory is affected by the emotional status of the person recollecting the memory and the content of the experience. Past research found that there are differences in autobiographical memory between people who have emotional disorders and those who do not. For example, Williams & Broadbent (1986) focused on people who attempted suicide, Rose Addis & Tippett (2004) on patients with Alzheimer disease and Williams et al. (2007) on people with emotional disorders. These studies concluded that autobiographical memory manifests differently in people with emotional disorders than in those with normal emotional health. They revealed that autobiographical memory in patients with disorders seems to be overgeneralized. The overgeneral memory refers to a tendency to retrieve memories only in generalized ways. People exhibit an * Corresponding author: hwiyeolj@gmail.com (Hwiyeol Jo) Published online at http://journal.sapub.org/ijpbs Copyright © 2016 Scientific & Academic Publishing. All Rights Reserved inability to retrieve specific memories. Some research explained that these people want to avoid remembering the previous painful experience, which is called affect regulation, so they describe their memories in abstract and general (Raes et al, 2003). If this retrieving style continues long term, people can suffer mnemonic interlock, destroying the indices for memory retrieval (Williams, 1996). Figure 1. The flow of memory retrieval in overgeneral memory: Overgeneralized memory retrieval does not follow the ordinary process, which cannot retrieve general, intermediate, then specific memory in turn. General and intermediate memories are cycled through again and again