Associations between episodic detail in young adults’ memory narratives and depressive symptoms: Event type matters

Abstract

This study aimed to partially replicate and extend an unexpected finding by Salmon et al. (2021) that, for community adolescents, greater episodic detail in a self-relevant narrative (a life turning point) predicted higher depressive symptoms concurrently and across one year. We recoded 164 young adults’ life narratives of three types (i.e., high point, low point, and turning point) from a previously published dataset. We replicated the finding that greater episodic detail in the turning point concurrently predicted greater depressive symptoms, albeit with a modest effect size. Episodic detail did not depressive symptoms in the low or high point narrative, and nor did it predict anxiety symptoms. Our earlier finding with adolescents has now been replicated with emerging adults, with implications for theories of the relationship between autobiographical memories and depression and for memory-based early intervention approaches.

Keywords

• Depressive symptoms
• Autobiographical memory
• Episodic detail
• Life narrative
• Emerging adults