Memory May Play A Role In Recovery From Sad Events

A strong memory may help people to bounce back from depression, especially among those who are middle-aged and older. '

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst discovered that episodic memory is related strongly to recovery from negative events. Lead researcher Rebecca Ready, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences, said this is the first study that examines how episodic memory, or the ability to recollect experiences rooted in a specific time and place, can impact "emotion recovery."

"Older adults with stronger scores on cognitive tasks have advantages in regulating their emotions," said Ready.

Ready and her team feel that "stronger memory may facilitate emotion recovery and this may be particularly true for older adults." But there is also the belief that the "older adults with memory impairment may be at risk for emotion dysregulation."

Scientists studied 23 adults aged 19 to 23 years old as well as 21 older adults aged 52 to 79 years old. They answered questionnaires about their momentary emotions before they were exposed to a 12-minute montage of sad movie clips. They then recorded their emotions twice---immediately after the video and again after a quick recovery period.

The participants' response to sad clips involved more sadness and hostility and low levels of cheerfulness and friendliness. Their memories were measured when they answered questions about events in the video after they looked at 15 still images: five were from the videos they had watched, and 10 were from other videos.

It was found that those who had better memory recovered faster than others with poor memories.

"Participants with better memory for details about the films recovered more thoroughly from the mood induction than participants with lower scores," researchers wrote.

Age seemed to be important in determining emotional recovery. The study showed that there was a strong and positive link between better memory and recovering happiness among older adults.

"It is unclear why recovery in negative emotions was not moderated by age as predicted," concluded  Ready. "The lack of effects here may be a consequence of the small sample and/or an indication that positive emotion recovery is a better index of effective emotion regulation than negative emotion recovery. Future work is necessary to explore these ideas."

The findings were published in the journal Experimental Aging Research.