The Mood-Congruent Model

2.5.8 The Mood-Congruent Model. Continuing with the investigation of the memory-emotion relationship, even though stress-memory relationship and their related mechanisms that are associated with false memories have been discussed meticulously so far, the relationship between memory and depression has not been investigated in this paper yet. Past research has shown that that people diagnosed with depression or other affective disorders tend to have memory bias for emotional information. Thus, they tend to make conclusions regarding emotional information with different criteria from healthy individuals. Emotional memory appears to be influenced by their mood and particularly depression and negative mood have been associated with memory impairments

Rumination is referred to ‘the repetitive thoughts and behaviours that drag individual’s attention on their symptoms and on the implications of these symptoms’. In accordance, existing research reports that rumination decreases the accuracy of memory, increasing memory incorrections (Watkins & Teasdale, 2001). Both mechanisms and their cognitive nature facilitate false memory recollection. Additionally, in support of the latter, Yeh and Hua (2009) in their study, found that depressed individuals report more false memories regarding negative items that outnumber the positive ones. In the same study they have proved that there seems to be no difference in false memories for positive items between healthy and depressed individuals. Also, they found no difference in responses between depressed patients and healthy controls regarding positive, negative and neutral word lists in DRM. Hence, in this experiment MCM bias does not seem to be present. Last but not least, even though there were no differences in recalling words of positive, negative and neutral words, depressed participants appear to falsely remember the critical lures (Yeh & Hua,

The vast majority of findings support that mood and specifically anxiety impairs memory. This relationship often leads to formation of false illusions of memory. However, studies have yielded inconsistent results. Contradicting evidence supports, that stress could enhance or have no effect on memory (Cazakoff, Johnson, & Howland, 2010). Additionally, Lee (2008) reports that when a memory is consolidated and then activated, it can be modified following a protein degradation process. After the first stage of protein synthesis, one more stage needs to proceed before reconsolidation. In this case, reconsolidation could strengthen memory, instead of impairing it (Zhao et al., 2009, as cited in Dongaonkar, et al. 2013). In accordance, Hupbach and Fieman (2012) conducted a study where participants had to memorize a passage and then they were exposed to cold pressor stress or warm water control. Immediately after that, they had to recall the passage and once again one day after. He concluded that memory has been enhanced after the exposure to stressors and the day after but only in men who indicated significantly high levels of cortisol as well. In contrast, the female participants of this study showed no cortisol increases and no stress effect on memory. This study summarizes and supports that stress does not