Transdiagnostic distortions in autobiographical memory recollection

Abstract

Distortions in the recollection of autobiographical memories are a transdiagnostic feature of multiple mental health difficulties including mood, anxiety, stressor-related, eating and psychotic disorders. These distortions can be categorized into three broad domains: relatively increased accessibility, affective impact and degree of detail for memories of negatively valenced events with corollary reductions along these dimensions for positive memories; unwanted and distressing intrusive memories of salient past events such as traumas; and a marked relative difficulty in the voluntary retrieval of specific, emotive autobiographical episodes in favour of general themes aggregated across multiple episodes or across extended autobiographical periods. In this Review, we summarize basic science investigations that have carefully mapped the nature of these recollective distortions transdiagnostically across a range of syndromes, and elucidate their causal roles in the onset, maintenance and recovery from disorder. The amenability of these distortions to improvement through cognitive training has led to the translation of this basic science into a number of exciting memory-based interventions that target distortions to generate downstream improvements in clinical symptoms. We review and evaluate these interventions. Finally, we offer a theoretical framework that integrates the basic and clinical research across these three domains and suggest key future research directions. Distortions of autobiographical memory recollection characterize a variety of mental health disorders. In this Review, Dalgleish and Hitchcock summarize key basic research findings in three domains of autobiographical memory distortion, and describe how these have been leveraged in pre-clinical and clinical interventions.