Remembering the bad times: autobiographical memory fluency, specificity and fading affect bias in adolescents at clinical risk of affective disorder

Background Distortions in autobiographical memory processing are implicated in the onset and maintenance of multiple mental health problems in adults. While reduced personal memory specificity has been identified as a transdiagnostic risk factor in adolescents, less is known about other domains of memory processing, including biases in the accessibility and affective intensity of negative and positive memories. Methods We administered a novel recall paradigm, the Good Day-Bad Day Task (Hitchcock et al., 2019), to assess autobiographical memory fluency for positive and negative events, memory specificity, and the Fading Affect Bias – the extent to which the emotional intensity associated with positive memories fades less than for negative memories overtime – in adolescents, aged 16-18, at high (n=201, Mage=17.20, SD=.60, 84.6% female, 2% other) and low clinical risk (n=117, Mage=17.10, SD=.60, 77.8% female) of affective disorder. Results We found that superior recall for positive relative to negative events and a strong fading affect bias were associated with good mental health. Risk of affective disorder was associated with a significant reduction in these positive biases, and recall of a higher number of negative memories compared to Low Risk adolescents. Memory specificity did not differ by risk status. Conclusion Findings extend research on autobiographical memory processing to two novel domains in adolescence and further elucidate how differences in autobiographical memory recall may underlie mental health, with implications for the development of memory-based interventions.