The Performance Characteristic Of Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory And Its Relationship With Executive Function

When asked to a cue word, individuals with certain characteristic are less specific and/or more overgeneral in their recall than others, this called overgeneral Autobiographical memory (OGM). According to the degree of the generality, overgeneral autobiographical memory can be divided into three categories:categoric memory, extended memory and semantic association. Not only affects the current state which will reduce the ability of individuals in problems solving, the overgeneral autobiographical memory will also weaken the individual information, self and social function that can’t be achieved of autobiographical memory. The most prominent model of mechanism underlying OGM to date is Williams et al.’s CaR-FA-X model. In this model, Williams indicates that executive function is the main cognitive factor. This study bases on the three exact kinds of OGM, chooses different emotion individual, analyses the performance characteristic of OGM and the relationship with the executive function.The study can be divided into three parts. In the first study, we adopt the Autobiographical memory test and choose some classical cue words to induce past memory. Basing on the OGM’s emotion preference and individual difference, we try to explore the performance characteristics of OGM. In the second study, we focus on the relationship between the executive function and the OGM. Classical mission were used to measure the sub-components of executive function, including inhibition of proponent responses, memory updating, attention switching and visual-space binding. The results are as follows:(1)Different emotion state of individual has different overgeneral characteristics and this phenomenon has showed the expansibility to susceptible population: compared with the depression population, the normal emotion individuals also retrieve the overgeneral autobiographical memory, except for the main difference on the specific category. Specific memory and category memory are the main memories for the normal emotion. In the mild depression, categorical memory exceeds the proportion of the specific memory. The proportion of the categorical memory and semantic associate obviously beyond the normal emotion individual. In the severe depression, the proportion of categorical memory goes obviously beyond the specific memory. In the meantime, the extend memory and semantic associate also shows the rapid rise.(2)Certain imbalance on negative emotional preference effect exists in the specific category of overgeneral autobiographical memory. This imbalance shows up in the categorical memory which accounted for the major proportion in memory. Semantic association is the symbol of the overgeneral autobiographical memory, but it’s not necessarily account for the highest. With the aggravation of the depression, the proportion of the specific memory will decrease, but raise in the semantic association. The proportion of categorical memory, extend memory and the semantic association showed gradually balance trend. The negative preference means that the general degree of negative memories extracted the highest, and the specific degree of positive memories exacted the lowest.(3)The symbolic overgeneral autobiographical memory-semantic association shows the correlation with the executive function’s subcomponent:inhibition, switching, updating and featured binding. To success retrieve the specific memory include:inhibition of overgeneral memory and search criteria, updating the information and the search criteria, switch between the search criteria and target memory, bind the different element. We only prove the correlation between the categories and inhibition, switch, and nothing in the categorical memory. In the categorical memory, we don’t find any correlation.(4)As a cognitive factor, executive function’s subcomponents are correlated with the overgeneral autobiographical memory. This study appears to justify and support that view of the OGM’s main model-CaR-FA-X. Besides, the OGM trend in normal population also provides a new perspective for the object and range expanded of this model study.