Relationship of Dysphoria to the Recall of Positive Negative and Neutral Words

This study investigated memory and cognitions in dysphoric and non-dysphoric individuals by examining reported thoughts and positive and negative word recall. Participants were female volunteers from Old Dominion University with 24 non-dysphoric subjects and 18 dysphoric subjects. Each subject was asked to read positive and negative life descriptions at separate times. After the descriptions had been read, 23 subjects were asked to suppress the description and 19 subjects were not given these instructions. Subjects then wrote down their thoughts for 6 minutes. Following the writing of thoughts, each subject was then asked to recall freely a list of 30 words. The results did not support the hypothesis that dysphorics would recall fewer positive words than the non-dysphorics. Although counterbalancing was used, order effects appeared throughout many of the analyses. Future research on the role of depressive cognitions in the maintenance dysphoria is discussed.