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Unconscious mood-congruent memory bias in depression

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Journal of Abnormal Psychology Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
1996, Vol. 105, No. 1, 34-41 0021-843X/96/$3.00

Unconscious Mood-Congruent Memory Bias in Depression

Philip C. Watkins, Karen Vache, Steven P. Verney, Andrew Mathews
and Stephanie Muller Medical Research Council Applied Psychology Unit
Eastern Washington University

The purpose of this study was to investigate an unconscious or implicit mood-congruent memory
( MCM ) bias in clinical depression. Many studies have shown an explicit memory bias, but no study
has yet found an implicit MCM bias in clinical depression. The authors compared depressed and
control group participants on a conceptually driven implicit memory test. After studying words of
positive, neutral, and negative affective valences, participants produced free associations to various
cues. Implicit memory or priming was demonstrated by the production of more studied than un-
studied words to the association cues. Depressed participants showed more priming of negative
words, whereas controls showed more priming of positivewords, thus supporting the MCM pattern.
Also, no implicit memory deficit was found in depressed participants. These findings are discussed
in the context of several prominent theories of cognition and depression.

Mood-congruent memory (MCM) may be an important cog-
nitive mechanism in the maintenance of depression. M C M re-
fers to the tendency for depressed or sad individuals to remem-
ber information consistent with their mood (i.e., negative or
unpleasant memories). Research indicates that MCM is a ro-
bust phenomenon in depression (for a review, see Blaney,
1986), and Teasdale (1983) has suggested that MCM might act
to maintain depression. If an individual is sad or depressed,
MCM indicates that more negative memories are accessible.
Recalling these memories tends to maintain or exacerbate the
depressed condition, which then leads to the recollection of
more negative memories, resulting in a vicious cycle.
Teasdale (1983) also suggested that MCM might help explain
why depressed individuals tend to avoid effective coping activi-
ties. Depression leads to increased recall of negative events. If
memory is biased in this fashion, the individual may have low-
ered expectations regarding the outcome of coping activities,
resulting in the avoidance of these coping behaviors. The de-
pressed state is then maintained as the result of the avoidance
of effective coping behaviors. For example, ifa depressed person
is invited to a party, the tendency to remember negative experi-
ences with parties in the past leads to lowered expectations for
enjoyment. These lowered expectations probably lead to the
Philip C. Watkins, Karen Vache, Steven P. Verney, and Stephanie
Muller, Department of Psychology,Eastern WashingtonUniversity:An-
drew Mathews, Medical Research Council Applied Psychology Unit,
Cambridge, England.
Preparation of this article was supported in part by a grant from the
Northwest Institute of Advanced Studies. We thank Corby Martin and
Robert Carpenter for their assistance in data collection, and Tom Pyle
for his advice regarding data analysis. We also wish to express our grat-
itude to Henry Roediger and Paula Hertel for their comments on drafts
of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Philip
C. Watkins, Department of Psychology, MS-94, Eastern Washington
University,526 5th Street, Cheney, Washington 99004. Electronic mail
may be sent via Internet to pwatkins@ewu.edu.
34
avoidance of that party and consequently the avoidance of what
might be a mood repair behavior. Thus, investigations of MCM
in depression may be important for determining specific cogni-
tive mechanisms that are active in the maintenance of
depression.
Although MCM has been repeatedly demonstrated (for a re-
view, see Blaney, 1986), almost all of these studies have used
explicit or conscious memory measures. In explicit memory
tests the individual consciously uses memory, and recall is di-
rected toward a specific learning experience. Most memory re-
search has used explicit memory tests. However, as Mason and
Graf have stated (1993), "'we now know, explicit memory is
only a small part--the conscious tip of the iceberg--of how
memory for recent events influences us in our daily activities"
(p. 8). Cognitive psychologists have been investigating uncon-
scious or implicit memory (Roediger, 1990; Schacter, 1987).
Implicit memory has been defined as "memory for information
that was acquired during a specific episode and that is expressed
on tests in which subjects are not required, and are frequently
unable, to deliberately or consciously recollect the previously
studied information" (Schacter, 1990, p. 338). If MCM is an
important maintenance mechanism in depression, it could be
argued that this negative bias actually affects adaptive behavior
in an unconscious fashion rather than in the conscious way that
is usually tapped by explicit memory tests. To return to the ear-
lier example, it seems unlikely that a depressed individual who
is considering a party invitation would consciously attempt to
remember other party experiences (explicit memory). More
likely, memory of past negative experiences unconsciously in-
fluences expectations regarding this event. It is possible that an
unconscious memory bias in depressed individuals is an impor-
tant factor influencing their negative view of reality. Thus, an
implicit MCM bias may be an important cognitive mainte-
nance mechanism in depression.
To our knowledge, only two published studies have investi-
gated MCM in clinical depression with implicit memory tests.
Recently, Watkins, Mathews, Williamson, and Fuller (1992)
published a study that did not find a MCM bias in implicit
 UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY BIAS
memory. In this study they compared depressed and control
group participants on an implicit memory test and an explicit
memory test. The implicit test used word stem completion (e.g.,
complete this stem with the first word that comes to mind."
los ). The explicit memory test used cued recall and had
identical memory cues as the implicit test. Thus, these two mea-
sures differed only in whether the participants were consciously
using memory. Watkins et al. found the well-demonstrated
MCM bias in the explicit memory measure but found no MCM
bias in the implicit memory test. Denny and Hunt (1992) con-
ducted a similar study with depressed participants but used
word fragment completion as their implicit memory test and
free recall as their explicit test. Their results were consistent
with Watkins et al.; they demonstrated MCM in the explicit test
but did not find this negative bias in the implicit test.
In a commentary on these two studies, Roediger and McDer-
mott (1992) made some interesting predictions. They observed
that both studies used perceptually driven implicit memory
tests, meaning that in these tasks cognitive activities are guided
by the perceptual features of the stimuli rather than by the
meaning of the stimuli. For example, the meaning of los is
not important to completing this word stem with the first word
that comes to mind. However, many memory tests do rely on
meaningful processing of the stimuli and so are called concep-
tually driven. Roediger (1990) has pointed out that virtually
all explicit memory tests are conceptually driven because the
individual must meaningfully relate memory cues to an earlier
learning experience. Thus, Roediger and McDermott (1992)
argued that the inability to find MCM with perceptually driven
implicit tests was not surprising, because word meaning should
not be expected to affect tests that do not require conceptual
processing. However, they predicted that MCM should be found
in implicit memory if conceptually driven tests are used. This
prediction follows the transfer-appropriate processing ap-
proach, which states that if cognitive processing at study and
test are matched, individuals are more likely to recall the infor-
mation than if processing at study and test are mismatched
( Morris, Bransford, & Franks, 1977). For example, if words are
studied in a perceptual fashion but the memory test requires
meaningful processing, the transfer-appropriate processing ap-
proach would predict that individuals will recall less informa-
tion than if both the study task and the memory test are mean-
ingfully driven.
The purpose of this study was to investigate implicit MCM
using a conceptually driven test. We exposed depressed and con-
trol group participants to positive, neutral, and negative words
in the study phase, then administered a conceptually driven im-
plicit memory test. In this test we presented participants with a
series of association cues and asked them to produce as many
associates as they could to each cue for 30 s. Using this method-
ology, studies have found that participants reliably produce
more target words that they had seen before than targets they
had not studied (Graf, Shimamura, & Squire, 1985; Kihlstrom,
Schacter, Cork, Hurt, & Behr, 1990; Srinivas & Roediger,
1990), thus demonstrating implicit memory. Following Roe-
diger and McDermott (1992), we predicted that an MCM bias
would be demonstrated with this memory measure.
The use of neutral words allowed us to investigate the possi-
bility of a general deficit in implicit memory. To date. one study
35
found an implicit memory deficit associated with depression
(Elliot & Greene, 1992), whereas several studies have not found
any overall priming difference with neutral materials (Denny &
Hunt, 1992; Hertel & Hardin, 1990; Watkins et al., 1992).
There is some evidence that although conceptual variables at
encoding affect conceptually driven implicit tests, individual
differences variables such as amnesia do not result in priming
deficits on conceptual tests (Shimamura, 1986). Thus, follow-
ing Roediger and McDermott ( 1992 ), we predicted that no im-
plicit memory deficit would be associated with depression.
A third purpose of this study was to test the elaboration hy-
pothesis of depression proposed by Williams, Watts, MacLeod,
and Mathews (1988). They argued that the negative cognitive
biases in depression are best explained by the tendency for de-
pressed individuals to elaborate negative information. Elabora-
tion is a more strategic cognitive process, and it is defined as
"the activation of a representation in relation to other associ-
ated representations to form new relations between them and
to activate old relationships" (p. 170). In the test phase of this
experiment, participants produced free associations to positive,
neutral, and negative cues. If Williams et al. are correct, then
depressed individuals should produce relatively more associa-
tions to negative cues and fewer associations to positive cues
than nondepressed controls.
Method
Design and Overview
This study used a 2 (Group: depressed individuals and controls) x 3
(Word Valence:positive, neutral, and negative) x 2 (Priming: studied
vs. unstudied words) mixed factorial design. Repeated measures were
Word Valenceand Priming. The between-subjectsvariable was Group.
At study, participants were randomly assigned to study one of two word
sets. Each word set contained positive, neutral, and negativewords. Par-
ticipants then completed a brief interference task. A free association
task followed, which included association cues that were related to
words from their studied word set and their unstudied word set.
Participants
We used two groups of participants in this study: clinically depressed
individuals and nondepressed controls. We defined the depressed group
as participants with Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores of greater
than 15 who met the diagnostic criteria for either major depression or
dysthymia, as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Men-
tal Disorders ( 3rd ed., rev.:DSM-IH-R; American Psychiatric Associ-
ation, 1987). Individuals with a reported history of mania were ex-
cluded. Diagnosis was determined through a structured interview, the
Schedule for AffectiveDisorders and Schizophrenia, Form C ( SADS-C;
Endicott & Spitzer, 1978; see the description below). All interviews of
depressed participants were conducted by clinical graduate students.
Interviewersmade independent diagnoses and then presented interview
data to the principal investigator,who made the final determination of
the diagnosis. Diagnostic agreement was reached in 94% of the cases.
Depressed individuals were recruited from undergraduate psychol-
ogy classes. A screening study was conducted where students were ad-
ministered the BDI along with a number of instruments relating to var-
ious psychological issues. Individuals with a BDI score of at least 16
were scheduled for the experiment. Depressed participants had to have
a BDI score of at least 16 at both screening and the experimental session.
We tested 33 individuals through the experimental protocol as potential
36 WATKINS, VACHE, VERNEY, MULLER, AND MATHEWS
depressed group participants; 13 actually met the criteria described
above and were included in the depressed group. No participants were
taking psychotropic medications.
Control group participants were defined as those individuals who bad
BDI scores of 5 or less and who did not meet the DSM-III-R
(American Psychiatric Association, 1987) diagnostic criteria for any
mood disorder. They also did not report a significant history of depres-
sion as measured by the Past Accounts of Sadness Test (PAST; Watkins
& Curtis, 1995). Confirmation o f diagnosis was conducted through in-
terview with the SADS-C. Controls included in the analysis were
matched to depressed participants with regard to gender, and we also
attempted to match for age as closely as possible. Each group contained
10 women and 3 m e n ) Mean ages o f the depressed and control groups
were 19.62 and 19.15, respectively. Both control and depressed partici-
pants who were recruited from psychology classes received partial
course credit for their participation.
Materials
Clinicalmeasures. The BDI (Beck, 1978; Beck & Steer, 1987) was
the primary self-report measure that was used for assessing depression
level. This is perhaps the most frequently used test in depression re-
search and has good psychometric data supporting its use.
To confirm depression diagnosis we used the SADS-C. This interview
scale is based on the Research Diagnostic Criteria ( RDC; Spitzer, Endi-
cott, & Robbins, 1975, 1978). Because of the similarity of the RDC
and DSM-II1-R (American Psychiatric Association, 1987 ) criteria for
depression, this interview is commonly used for confirming depression
diagnosis. Form C is a shorter interview but still covers depressive symp-
toms comprehensively. This form also provides a derived Hamilton Rat-
ing Scale for Depression (HRSD; Hamilton, 1960, 1967) score
(Endicott, Nee, Cohen, Fleiss, & Sarantakos, 1981). Thus, this in-
terview not only covers the DSM-III-R depression diagnostic criteria,
but it also provides a measure o f the severity of depression.
The PAST is a self-report questionnaire designed to assess an individ-
ual's history of depression. It contains a simplified description of the
DSM-III-R (American Psychiatric Association, 1987 ) criteria for ma-
jor depression and for dysthymia. Following each description the par-
ticipant is asked whether he or she experienced an episode o f depression
as described. For major depression, participants are also asked to esti-
mate how many episodes o f depression they have undergone. At the
conclusion of the questionnaire, they are asked several questions relat-
ing to their history of depression (e.g. "Have you ever thought about
suicide?", "Have you ever felt so depressed you sought help from
friends?"). Psychometric data on this instrument appear good. Data
were collected on the PAST over several studies with undergraduates
from psychology courses. Reliability and validity data were collected
from 142 participants. Item to total correlations range from .28 to .61
(mean r = .46), and reliability is adequate (coefficient c~ = .81, 12
items). Validity data also appear good. The total score of the PAST is
moderately correlated with the BDI (r = .43). Thus, although it is re-
lated to report o f current depression, the PAST measures another dis-
tinct variable. Similarly, the number of depressive episodes participants
report is moderately related to the BD! ( r = .26, p < .01 ). As predicted,
women had reliably higher PAST scores than men (t = 2.04, p < .02)
and were more likely to report a past episode o f major depression (t =
1.63, p < .05 ). There was no difference between the genders in report of
past episodes of dysthymia. Thus, data from the PAST roughly corre-
spond to known prevalence patterns. Using this measure, we defined a
significant history of depression as two or more episodes of depression.
Wordstimuli. The words used in this study were chosen to represent
positive (pleasant), neutral, and negative (unpleasant) affective va-
lence. These positive and negative words were derived from past mood-
congruent research (e.g., Gotlib, McLachlan, & Katz, 1988; Kuiper &
Derry, 1982; see also Watkins et al., 1992, for a description ofa norming
study). The positive and negative word groups were roughly equivalent
in length and frequency. These words were divided into two equivalent
sets consisting of positive, neutral, and negative words (see Table 1 ).
One set served as the studied or primed set and the other as the unstud-
ied set for each participant. Each word set consisted of 8 positive, 8
neutral, and 8 negative words. Mean word frequency (using Thorndike
& Lorge, 1944) for Word Set A was 28.54 words per million (SD =
35.65 ), and word frequency for Set B was 27.54 words per million (SD
= 27.67). Mean length of words was 8.04 letters (SD = 1.65) for Set A
and 7.25 letters (SD = 0.99) for Set B. In each group, Set A served as
the primed set for 7 participants, and Set B was the primed word set for
6 participants.
We conducted an analysis to determine whether word set had any
effect on priming. Word set did not interact with priming, F( 1, 24) =
0.50, ns, and no interactions with word set involving Group, Valence,
and Priming reached significance. All words chosen for the study task
were moderately related to certain cue words. In a pilot study, we asked
participants to produce associations to a number o f positive and nega-
tive cues. We then chose targets from the words that several, but not
most, participants produced to the cues. This selection criteria was used
so that most participants would not produce the unstudied target words
in the association task. If participants produced a high number of un-
studied targets, then a differential priming effect would be ditficult to
demonstrate. Neutral words and cues were chosen from those used by
Srinivas and Roediger (1990). Some lack of equivalence existed be-
tween the emotional and neutral words in that the positive and negative
words were adjectives and the neutral words were not.
Apparatus
The word stimuli were presented in the study phase on an IBM-com-
patible computer. Likewise, the distractor task and the association cues
in the test phase were also presented by computer. The presentation of
the stimuli was programmed through the Micro Experimental Labora-
tory software package Schneider, 1988).
Procedure
Following the screening study, appropriate participants were called
and scheduled for experimental sessions. After reading and signing the
consent form, they were introduced to the study phase of the experi-
ment. They were first randomly assigned to be exposed to one o f the two
word sets as described above. The set they were assigned to would serve
as their studied (primed) word set, and the set they were not assigned to
served as their unstudied word set (unprimed). Participants were told
that a number of words would appear on the screen, one at a time, and
that their task was to attempt to imagine themselves in a scene that
involved themselves and the word presented. They were instructed to
press a button on the computer keyboard "as soon as you have a clear
image of the scene." Following a 1 s "get ready" prompt, each stimulus
word appeared on the screen for 15 s. After imagining each scene, par-
ticipants were asked several questions about the scene: (a) they were
asked whether the scene was an actual scene from their past or an imag-
inary one, (b) they were asked whether they were the principal character
of the scene, (c) they were asked to rate the vividness of the scene on a
9-point Likert-type scale, and (d) they were asked to rate the pleasant-
ness-unpleasantness of the scene on a 9-point Likert-type scale.
Following this sequence, the next stimulus word was presented. Five
A total of 22 participants who met the criteria for the control group
completed the experimental protocol. Statistical analyses comparing
the entire group of controls to the depressed group yielded essentially
identical results as that reported here.
 UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY BIAS 37

Table l
Association Cues and Targets by Valenceand WordSet
Valence

Word set Positive Neutral Negative

Adored-Admired Clothing-Sweater Blamed-Punished

Attractive-Desirable Furniture-Dresser Bleak-Hopeless
Approval-Supported Kitchen utensils-Spatula Criticized-Judged
Hopeful-Optimistic Musical instrument-Piccolo Discontent-Unsatisfied
Loved-Appreciated Sports-Bowling Hated-Detested
Respected-Liked Senses-Hearing Isolated-Abandoned
Successful-Accomplished Types of cloth-Flannel Mistake-Failure
Creative-Talented Vegetables-Cabbage Ugly-Unwanted
Awarded-Praised Animals-Giraffe Downcast-Gloomy
Capable-Competent Colors-Magenta Empty-Lonely
Fulfilled--Gratified Fruits-Peaches Guilty-Accused
Outstanding-Superior Fuels-Propane Humiliated-Ashamed
Smart-Witty Parts of a car-Muffler Ignored-Neglected
Triumph-Overcome Reptiles-Turtles Inadequate-Unworthy
Valuable-Needed Sciences-Geology Unlovable-Rejected
Worthy-Accepted Trees-Willows Worthless-Useless

Note. In each pair, the first word or phrase is the cue, and the word following the dash is the target.

practice trials were presented, followed by the experimental trials. Stim-
ulus words were presented in random order. After the presentation of
the 24 words in the study phase, all participants were exposed to a brief
distractor task. They were shown an array of numbers or letters (or
both) on the screen, and their task was to determine as quickly as possi-
ble whether there was a letter m located in the array. None of the letter
arrays formed a legitimate English word. This task took approximately
30 s to complete.
Participants were then introduced to the test phase. In the introduc-
tion of this phase an attempt was made to dissociate study and test.
They were asked to participate in a "developmental experiment" and
were told that we needed to "develop some materials for a future exper-
iment." They were told that their task was to produce as many one-
word associations to the cue words as possible and that for some words
(categories) the best way to produce associations was to list as many
instances of the category as possible. However, other cues were not
clearly categories, and with these words "you will probably produce
more associations if you think of words that are closely related to the
word (like synonyms)." In each trial, a "get ready" prompt appeared
on the screen along with a tone (to reorient the participants ). Following
the prompt, a cue word appeared and the participant was instructed to
produce as many associations to the word as possible. Each association
cue remained on the computer screen for 30 s. Participants were given
one practice trial, which was then followed by 48 experimental trials.
Each of the 48 cue words was related to one of the words from either the
studied or unstudied word lists. Responses were recorded through audio
tape, and the experimenters also made a written record of the critical
responses.
Immediately following the free association task, participants were ad-
ministered the BDI, PAST, and other measures. Then the experimenter
administered the SADS-C interview. Finally they were debriefed. The
debriefing interview included open-ended questions regarding the par-
ticipants' perceptions of the purpose ofthe study. Second, we asked par-
ticipants how they came up with the associations in the free association
task. We also asked more direct questions regarding the participants'
awareness of the memory components of the implicit test. For example,
we asked them whether they were "consciously trying to come up with
word associations that were from the imagination task." (All partici-
pants responded "'no.") We also asked whether they thought "that the
free association task was a memory test" while they were performing
the association task. Then we asked them whether they noticed that
some of the associations they produced were from the words in the en-
coding task. Finally, we included a question regarding their estimation
of the percentage of positive and negative words in the encoding task.
Results
Participant Characteristics
M e a n B D I scores were 29.00 (SD = 9.27) for the depressed
g r o u p a n d 2.69 (SD = 1.70) for the controls. M e a n derived
H R S D scores were 18.46 ( S D = 7.71 ) a n d 4.58 ( S D = 2.23 ) for
the depressed a n d control groups, respectively.
Analysis of Associations
To test the hypothesis t h a t depressed p a r t i c i p a n t s elaborate
negative i n f o r m a t i o n m o r e t h a n controls, we c o n d u c t e d a 2
( G r o u p ) X 3 ( C u e Valence) repeated m e a s u r e s analysis o f vari-
ance (ANOVA) for n u m b e r of u n s t u d i e d associations produced.
A n y association t h a t a p a r t i c i p a n t p r o d u c e d t h a t was n o t a stud-
ied target was included in this analysis. G r o u p was a between-
subjects factor a n d Cue Valence was a within-subjects factor. We
present this analysis prior to the p r i m i n g analysis because the
results b e a r on how we c o n d u c t e d the p r i m i n g analysis. M e a n s
for n u m b e r o f associations p r o d u c e d are shown in Table 2. A
large m a i n effect for Cue Valence was found, F ( 2, 48 ) = 315.0 l,
MSE = 146.46, p < .000 I. T h i s was d u e to all participants pro-
d u c i n g a m u c h larger n u m b e r o f associations to n e u t r a l cues
(see Table 2). As predicted, the Valence X G r o u p interaction
was also significant, F ( 2 , 48 ) = 3.26, MSE = 477.59, p < .05.
We investigated this interaction by f o r m i n g a n association bias
score by s u b t r a c t i n g the n u m b e r o f associations p r o d u c e d to
negative cues from the n u m b e r of associations p r o d u c e d to pos-
itive cues. We then c o m p a r e d the groups with a t test, a n d the
38 WATKINS, VACHE, VERNEY, MULLER, AND MATHEWS

Table 2 ing scores for each valence by subtracting the number of un-
Number of Unstudied Associations Produced as a studied targets produced from the number of studied targets,
Function of Group and Valence thus incorporating the priming factor into the figure. This num-
ber was then turned into a proportion by dividing it by 8 (the
Group maximum priming score a participant could receive in a va-
Control Depressed lence category). As is evident from this figure, the pattern of
means for the two groups conforms to a mood-congruent pat-
Valence M SD M SD tern. To explore this interaction further, we compared the
groups with planned orthogonal contrasts of priming scores by
Positive 58.54 20.24 65.31 18.75
Neutral 131.54 32.54 131.08 14.29 Valence. We found that the control group had significantly
Negative 46.92 18.83 63.54 13.51 higher priming scores for positive targets than did depressed
participants (p < .05), and conversely depressed participants
had significantly higher priming scores for negative targets (p <
.05). The groups did not differ with regard to priming of neu-
group differences were found to be reliable, t = 2.53, p < . 05. tral targets (p = .90), thus showing no implicit memory deficit
The mean positive association bias score for controls was 11.62, for depressed participants.
and the mean for depressed participants was 1.77. Because of the group and valence differences in number of
associations produced, it could be argued that the number of
opportunities that existed for producing a target was not equiv-
P r i m i n g Analysis
alent across valences. Thus, we formed a dependent variable
An association was coded as a target if the participant pro- that accounted for the number of associations produced. We
duced one of the targets from either the studied or unstudied formed scores for each participant that represented the percent-
target list. Different forms of the words (e.g., failed instead of age of targets produced of the total number of associations pro-
f~ilure) were coded as targets produced. Acceptable responses duced for each valence condition. We then conducted a 2
were defined prior to data collection. Synonyms and words re- (Group) × 3 (Valence) × 2 (Priming) repeated measures
lated to targets were not coded as targets. For example, unsuc- ANOVA. Confirming our primary analysis, the interaction be-
cessful or loser were not coded as targets for the word failure. If tween Group, Valence, and Priming was significant, F(2, 48 ) =
a participant produced a target more than once, this was 3.46, M S E = 2.27, p < .05.
counted as only one target produced.
Prior to conducting our primary analysis,we first analyzed Discussion
number of unstudied targets produced by Group and Valence.
No main effect for Group was found, F( 1, 24) = 0.38, M S E = This study represents the first demonstration of an MCM bias
1.21, n s; the interaction between Group and Valence was not on a conceptually driven implicit memory test. Depressed par-
significant, F(2, 48) = .72, M S E = 1.02, ns. Thus, the groups ticipants were found to have greater priming of negative words
did not differentially respond on our baseline measure. How-
ever, a main effect of Valence was found, F(2, 48 ) = 8.31, M S E
= 1.02, p < .05. This effect paralleled our finding with the asso-
ciation analyses described earlier, in that participants produced Table 3
more neutral unstudied targets than positive or negative. Mean Number ql'Target Words Produced as a Function of
In our primary analysis we conducted a 2 (Group) X 2 Group, Valence, and Priming
(Priming) x 3 (Valence) repeated measures ANOVA for num- Group
ber of targets produced. Number of targets produced included
words produced that were from either the studied or the unstud- Control Depressed
ied word lists. Means for number of targets produced are shown
in Table 3. No main effect was found for Group, F( 1, 24) = Valence M SD M SD
0.58, M S E = 2,84, ns, indicating that the two groups did not Positive
differ in overall number of targets produced. A strong effect for Studied targets 2.85 1,34 2.31 1.03
Priming was found, F ( 1 , 2 4 ) = 63.50, M S E = 1.60, p < .0001, Unstudied targets 0.85 0.80 1.38 1.19
indicating the existence of an implicit memory effect. A main Difference (priming) 2.00 1.35 0.93 1.66
Neutral
effect was found for Valence, F( 2, 48 ) = 13.44, M S E = 1.1 O, p
Studied targets 3.46 1.56 3.46 0.88
< .0001. This was due to all participants producing more stud- Unstudied targets 1.92 1.38 1.85 1.14
ied and unstudied neutral word targets. Neutral words were not Difference (priming) 1.54 1.61 1.61 1.44
primed easier than positive or negative words, however. This was Negative
demonstrated by the absence of a Priming X Valence interac- Studied targets 1.92 1.66 3.23 1.24
Unstudied targets 0.77 0.83 0.77 0.72
tion, F(2, 48) = 0.45, M S E = .89, ns. Difference (priming) 1.15 1.72 2.46 1.13
Most importantly (and as predicted), the three-way interac- Total
tion between Group, Priming, and Valence was significant, F(2, Studied targets 8.23 3.63 9.00 2.48
48) = 5.21, M S E = 0.89, p < .05. The nature of our finding is Unstudied targets 3.54 2.07 4.00 1.73
Difference (priming) 4.69 3.52 5.00 2.61
depicted in Figure 1. This figure was formed by creating prim-
 UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY BIAS
Figure 1. Mean priming proportion by group and word valence. Prim-
ing proportion is number of studied minus unstudied targets produced,
divided by the maximum priming score ( 8 ).
and less priming of positive words than controls. We believe
this finding may have important implications for understanding
depression. It may be that the negatively colored view of the
world exhibited by depressed individuals and their avoidance of
activities that may help repair their mood are influenced by this
unconscious negative memory bias. Although this study may
lack some generalizability in that the depressed participants
were college students, a recent review has shown that there is
little reason to believe that findings from depressed college stu-
dents are different from depressed individuals at large
(Vredenburg, Flett, & Krames, 1993). We agree with Coyne
(1994) that Vredenburg et al. confused the question "Are de-
pressed college students different from depressed subjects at
large?" with "Are college students with elevated BDI scores
different from depressed subjects at large?" However, Coyne's
critique does not appear to preclude generalizing from a prop-
erly diagnosed depressed college population.
The finding of the current study contrasts with two other
studies that did not find an implicit MCM bias (Denny & Hunt,
1992; Watkins et al., 1992 ). As pointed out earlier, both of these
studies used perceptually driven implicit memory tests, whereas
we used a conceptually driven test. It seems that the most
straightforward way to interpret this pattern of results is to as-
sert that conceptually driven processes at test reveal MCM in
depression, whereas perceptually driven processes do not. Al-
though we believe this to be the case, other explanations, such
as increased sensitivity of the test and use of different word sets,
are also possible.
Often, mood state-dependent recall and MCM are conceptu-
ally linked in theories of emotion and cognition (e.g., Bower,
1981). It is of interest to note that the pattern of findings in
39
implicit MCM appears to be consistent with that found in
mood state-dependent recall research. Using a musical mood
induction methodology, Eich and associates have found evi-
dence of mood state-dependent recall in conceptually driven
implicit memory measures, but not in perceptually driven im-
plicit tests (for a review of these studies, see MacAulay, Ryan, &
Eich, 1993).
One difference in the pattern of findings between implicit
tests could be due to participants being more aware that con-
ceptually driven tests involve memory than the perceptually
driven tests (see Bowers & Schacter, 1990). Data from the de-
briefing interviews in this study seem to contradict this hypoth-
esis, however. In the current study, 42% of the participants
claimed they did not recognize that they had produced any as-
sociations from the study phase. In the Watkins et al. (1992)
study, 96% of the participants recognized that they used studied
words to complete the word stems. Because almost half of the
participants in the current study were unaware that they had
produced any studied targets, we defined these participants as
m e m o r y u n a w a r e and re-analyzed our data with this memory
awareness factor. This analysis showed no significant interac-
tions with the other factors (i.e., Group, Priming, Valence).
Thus, awareness of the memory-based aspects of the implicit
test appeared to have no impact on the implicit MCM effect
found here.
It could be argued that referring to our finding as an uncon-
scious m e m o r y bias is problematic (see Schacter, Bowers, &
Booker, 1989). After all, 58% of our participants had at least
some awareness of the memory aspects of the experiment. We
hold that the conscious aspects of this study are largely epiphe-
nomena, that is, participants unconsciously (unintentionally)
produced a studied target and then recognized that the associa-
tion was from the study task. In a series of studies using percep-
tual identification as their implicit test, Richardson-Klavehn,
Lee, Joubran, and Bjork (1994) showed that the principle
difference between implicit and explicit tests was in whether the
individuals used intentional recollection. Thus, implicit mem-
ory tests appear to be tapping incidental retrieval. In fact, all of
our participants stated that they were not "consciously trying"
to recall items from the study task. However, most were aware
that some of their associations were studied targets. Thus, it is
possible that they can unconsciously retrieve an item and then
become consciously aware that the item was previously studied.
Future research may determine whether a participant's aware-
ness that an item was previously studied affects subsequent re-
trieval. In this study, however, test awareness had no impact on
the variables of interest.
How does our primary finding here fit with prominent theo-
ries of cognition and sadness-depression? It seems that a con-
ceptually driven MCM bias would be consistent with the
spreading activation approach of Bower ( 1981 ) and the schema
theory of Beck (Kovacs & Beck, 1978). However, neither of
these theories make specific predictions about cognitive biases
in implicit memory. Even if we deduce from these theories the
prediction of a conceptually driven MCM bias, it would be
difficult for these theories to explain the absence of MCM with
perceptually driven tests. The lack of a mood-congruent bias in
perceptually driven tests and our finding of MCM in a concep-
tually driven test appear to be handled by the approach of Wil-
40 WATKINS, VACHE, VERNEY, MULLER, AND MATHEWS
liams et al. (1988). They argue that the cognitive bias in depres-
sion is limited more to elaborative processes rather than the ini-
tial "pick up" or activation of the information in memory. If we
concede that elaboration is a conceptually driven process, then
the Williams et al. approach seems to account for the pattern of
findings. In fact, several studies have shown that the manipula-
tion of conceptual variables at encoding affect conceptually
driven tests much like they influence explicit memory tests
(Blaxton, 1989; Hamann, 1990; Smith & Branscombe, 1987,
1988; Srinivas & Roediger, 1990). These conceptual manipula-
tions have little or no effect on perceptually driven implicit
memory tests (for a review, see Roediger, 1990).
We also tested the elaboration hypothesis of Williams et al.
(1988) by comparing the number of associations produced to
the valenced cues between the two groups. As predicted, a
mood-congruent pattern was found. This finding clearly seems
to support the elaboration hypothesis.
This study also speaks to the issue of whether an implicit
memory deficit exists in depression. Although several studies
did not find an implicit deficit in depression and sadness
(Denny & Hunt, 1992; Hertel & Hardin, 1990; Watkins et al.,
1992), one study found that depressed individuals did show an
implicit memory deficit with word stem completion and homo-
phone spelling (Elliot & Greene, 1992). Although Roediger and
McDermott (1992) pointed out some methodological diffi-
culties with this study, they concluded that these problems
could not account for the priming deficit demonstrated by El-
liot and Greene (1992). Our result here agrees with the findings
of the other studies that used perceptually driven tests. Thus, as
predicted by Roediger and McDermott (1992), the bulk of the
data suggests that implicit memory is intact in depression. De-
pression, like amnesia and age, is related to a deficit in explicit
memory, but does not appear to impair implicit memory (e.g.,
Graf, 1990; Schacter, 1985 ).
To summarize, this study represents the first demonstration
of an implicit MCM bias in clinical depression. This was dem-
onstrated with a conceptually driven implicit test. By eontrast,
perceptually driven tests have not revealed MCM in clinical de-
pression (Denny & Hunt, 1992; Watkins et al., 1992). Thus, as
predicted by Roediger and McDermott (1992), conceptually
driven implicit memory appears to conform to the same pattern
as that of explicit memory, in which MCM has frequently been
demonstrated in depression (Blaney, 1986). Second, no im-
plicit memory deficit was found with depressed individuals. Ev-
idence appears to be converging to support the supposition that
no implicit memory deficit exists in depression, contrasting
with the explicit memory deficit that has been repeatedly dem-
onstrated ( for a review, see Johnson & Magaro, 1987). Whereas
it is tempting to conclude that MCM exists in conceptually
driven memory and not in perceptually driven memory, this
conclusion is premature at this point. More research is needed
to test this conclusion by using several different perceptually
driven and conceptually driven tests in the same study.
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Received May 3, 1994
Revision received March 13, 1995
Accepted May 19, 1995 •