Modification of Rumination and Cognitive Emotion Regulation of Depressed Dormitory Students: Autobiographical Memory Specificity Training

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of autobiographical memory specificity training on rumination and cognitive emotion regulation in depressed female students of Isfahan University in the academic year of 2018. The research was semi-experimentally designed using the pre-test and post-test for both experimental and control groups with two-month follow-up. So twenty depressed female students were selected as purposive sampling, and they were randomly assigned to two groups of experimental (10 subjects) and control (10 subjects). The research tools were Beck depression inventory, ruminative response scale and cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire. The experimental group who underwent autobiographical memory specificity training for five sessions, and the control group received no intervention. The data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance. According to the results of the research, the autobiographical memory specificity training led to decrease rumination in the post-test and follow-up phase. In general, it can be concluded that memory specificity training as a cost-effective and easy-to-implement intervention, by recalling memories and reducing memory generalization, can be effective on rumination in depressive individuals.

Keywords

• autobiographical memory
• cognitive emotion regulation
• depression
• memory specificity
• rumination