A developmental psychopathology model of overgeneral autobiographical memory

Developmental Review 31 (2011) 32–54

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A developmental psychopathology model of overgeneral autobiographical memory Kristin Valentino ⇑ Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, 128 Haggar Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, United States

a r t i c l e

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Article history: Received 5 October 2010 Revised 24 May 2011 Available online 21 June 2011 Keywords: Autobiographical memory Developmental psychopathology Depression Child trauma Overgeneral

a b s t r a c t Overgeneral memory (OGM) is a phenomenon that refers to difficulty retrieving specific autobiographical memories. The tendency to be overgeneral in autobiographical memory recall has been commonly observed among individuals with emotional disorders compared to those without emotional disorders. Despite significant advances in identifying mechanisms that underlie OGM, etiological models are not particularly developmental in nature and, instead, are focused on identifying isolated cognitive presentations of individuals with high OGM. The aim of the current paper is to utilize a developmental psychopathology framework, which emphasizes the interface between typical and atypical development, and risk and protective factors at multiple ecological levels, to propose a comprehensive model of OGM development. Specifically, (1) the progression of current etiological models of OGM is reviewed; (2) developmental theory and research on autobiographical memory that have relevance for OGM are discussed; and (3) an integrative model of OGM that includes processes at psychological, biological, social, and cultural levels is proposed. Directions for future research are formulated and treatment implications derived from this perspective are addressed. Ó 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction Overgeneral memory (OGM) is a phenomenon that refers to difficulty retrieving specific autobiographical memories. The tendency to be overgeneral in autobiographical memory recall has been commonly observed among adults with depression and/or posttraumatic stress disorder. For example, ⇑ Fax: +1 574 631 8883. E-mail address: [email protected] 0273-2297/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2011.05.001

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when asked to recall a specific episode from one’s past, adults who are depressed as compared with those nondepressed are more likely to provide a categorical response, or recall a memory that refers to an extended period of time (i.e., the summer before I went to college) rather than recalling a specific event in their personal past (see Moore & Zoellner, 2007, for review). OGM has high clinical relevance because overgenerality is not only associated with depression and PTSD, but it also appears to predict the onset and course of these disorders. For example, OGM is predictive of PTSD after a trauma, (Harvey, Bryant, & Dang, 1998), of vulnerability toward developing depression (van Minnen, Wessel, Verhaak, & Smeenk, 2005), and of delayed recovery from episodes of affective disorders (Brittlebank, Scott, Williams, & Ferrier, 1993; Dalgleish, Spinks, Yiend, & Kuyken, 2001). Moreover, memory remains overgeneral in those with a history of emotional disorder, even when they are not currently depressed (e.g., Mackinger, Pachinger, Leibetseder, & Fartacek, 2000), and OGM when one is not depressed predicts severity of later depressive symptomatology (e.g., Gibbs & Rude, 2004; Mackinger et al., 2000). As such, researchers have been quite interested in the etiology of OGM, and in developing models to explain its emergence (Williams, 1996; Williams et al., 2007). In this paper, a developmental psychopathology perspective on the development of overgeneral autobiographical memory is presented. From this conceptualization, in order to understand developmental processes or outcomes, it is essential to understand the integration of developmental processes at multiple levels of complexity within individuals over the life course including cognitive, affective, biological, social, and cultural processes (Cicchetti, 1984). Additionally, it is necessary to integrate multidisciplinary advances in research with both typically developing and atypically developing populations, and among fields including developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, psychiatry, and neurosciences. Therefore, this developmental psychopathology position urges current models to move past identifying isolated deficits in cognitive or affective presentations of individuals with high OGM and to alternatively begin formulating how they are integrated across developing psychological and biological systems within the individual, and within a multilevel ecology. As such, the aim of the current paper is to utilize a developmental psychopathology framework, which emphasizes the interface between typical and atypical development, and risk and protective factors at multiple ecological levels, to propose a comprehensive model of OGM development. First, etiological models of OGM are reviewed, followed by a survey of developmental research on autobiographical memory at multiple levels of ecology that have relevance for OGM. A developmental psychopathology model is then proposed to address additional mechanisms/factors that may be important to consider in understanding the development of OGM. The concluding section considers how this model can direct/inform future research and discusses treatment implications derived from this perspective. Occurrence of OGM OGM was first described by Williams and Broadbent in 1986 when studying the memory of depressed and suicidal adults. Since that time, OGM has been documented in several samples of adults all of whom exhibit or exhibited depression, a history of trauma (particularly childhood trauma), or both (Moore & Zoellner, 2007). Specifically, OGM has been observed among adults with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD; Brittlebank et al., 1993; Dalgleish et al., 2001; Goddard, Dritschel, & Burton, 1996; Henderson, Hargreaves, Gregory, & Williams, 2002; Kuyken & Dalgleish, 1995; Moore, Watts, & Williams, 1988; Wessel, Meeren, Peeters, Arntz, & Merckelbach, 2001); with Bipolar Disorder (Scott, Stanton, Garland, & Ferrier, 2000); who are remitted from MDD (Mackinger et al., 2000); and who are suicidal (Williams & Broadbent, 1986; Williams & Dritschel, 1988). OGM has also been found among adults with PTSD (e.g., McNally, Lasko, Macklin, & Pitman, 1995; McNally, Prassas, Shin, & Weathers, 1994). Despite the seeming pervasive nature of OGM across these clinical groups, other clinical populations such as those with generalized anxiety (Burke & Mathews, 1992; Wessel et al., 2001), or OCD without comorbid depression (Wilhelm, McNally, Baer, & Florin, 1997) do not demonstrate OGM. Therefore, etiological models of OGM have attempted to identify mechanisms that may

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contribute to the development and maintenance of OGM and may be specific to depressive and posttraumatic symptomatology. Despite evidence of increased overgenerality in depressed and traumatized samples, the extant research on the associations among depression, trauma, or both, on OGM has revealed a number of inconsistencies (Moore & Zoellner, 2007). For example, multiple studies have demonstrated that child trauma is associated with difficulty in specific memory retrieval in adulthood over and above the effects of depression (de Decker, Hermans, Raes, & Eelen, 2003; Henderson et al., 2002; Kuyken & Brewin, 1995). However, other studies have reported a null effect of trauma on OGM (e.g., Orbach, Lamb, Sternberg, Williams, & Dawud-Noursi, 2001; Peeters, Wessel, Merckelbach, & Boon-Vermeeren, 2002; Wilhelm et al., 1997), and another found that depressed adolescents with a history of trauma retrieved fewer OGMs than depressed adolescents without a trauma history (Kuyken, Howell, & Dalgleish, 2006). The fact that these investigations relied on retrospective reports of childhood trauma (mostly with adult samples) likely contributes to the lack of consistency in findings. This raises important questions about the accuracy of retrospective reports in the absence of additional, more objective measures of trauma (Widom, 1989). Moreover, much of the aforementioned research is confounded with comorbid psychopathology, which renders it difficult to disentangle the relation of trauma, in particular, to OGM. Further complicating the picture is research among adults suggesting that exposure to trauma alone may not be sufficient to develop OGM, unless accompanied by prolonged emotional disturbance or PTSD (Harvey et al., 1998; McNally et al., 1994, 1995). In contrast, research among children provides evidence for a direct association between child physical and sexual abuse and OGM, even in the absence of, and controlling for, clinically significant psychopathology (Valentino, Toth, & Cicchetti, 2009). Thus, several factors such as the severity and timing of the traumatic event(s), as well as individuals’ emotional-regulation abilities and reactions to trauma (Goodman, Quas, & Ogle, 2010) may be important in moderating the association between trauma and OGM. Research reporting increased overgenerality among child burn victims (Stokes, Dritschel, & Bekerian, 2004), but not among individuals who sustained burns as adults (Willebrand et al., 2002), and research that reports an association between childhood sexual abuse and OGM among adolescents, but not adults (Ogle et al., submitted for publication) adds to a growing literature that suggests the developmental timing of traumatic experiences may play a key role in the etiology of OGM. An additional complication in OGM research is conflicting findings regarding the extent to which overgenerality is elicited in response to positively- verses negatively- valenced emotional cues. For example, a number of studies among depressed adults indicate that positive cues elicit more overgeneral memories than do negative ones (e.g., Williams & Broadbent, 1986; Williams & Dritschel, 1988; Williams & Scott, 1988); whereas the majority of research among adults with depression report no differences in memory specificity as a function of cue valence (see Williams et al., 2007). Similarly, in studies examining the association between trauma and OGM, the predominant finding is increased OGM in response to both positive and negative cues (Williams et al., 2007); however, two studies report that overgenerality in response to negative (but not positive) cues was associated with trauma (Dalgleish et al., 2003; Peeters et al., 2002), whereas others report overgenerality in response to positive (but not negative) cues (McNally, Lasko, Macklin, & Pitman, 1995; McNally et al., 1994). Moreover, it is important to note that across studies of OGM, individuals with depression and/or trauma do recall specific autobiographical events; in fact, the percentage of specific memories retrieved often exceeds 50%, but is significantly lower than individuals without depression or trauma (Dalgleish et al., 2003). Both the lack of a consistent valence effect, and notion that individuals with depression and/or trauma quite often retrieve specific autobiographical memories present challenges for current etiological models of OGM (Howe, Toth, & Cicchetti, 2006). As a review of the historical progression of etiological models of OGM is presented in the following sections, it is important to keep in mind the aforementioned inconsistencies in the literature regarding predictors of OGM. Current etiological models are unable to adequately account for all of the empirical data. As such, a more comprehensive model that places OGM in a broader ecological and developmental context is necessary.

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Etiological models Early views on the development of OGM emerged from a ‘‘main effects’’ perspective, in which it was believed that single risk factors, such as early trauma, could alone provide an etiological account of OGM. The majority of this seminal work emerged from the cognitive psychology discipline. Perhaps the most influential early model of OGM is Williams’ (1996) functional avoidance hypothesis. According to this model, autobiographical memory retrieval is conceptualized as a top-down, generative process (Burgess & Shallice, 1996), whereby general categories of memories precede the retrieval of specific event representations. As such, Williams hypothesized that during this generative retrieval process, memory becomes truncated at an intermediate (general) level as a way of passively regulating affect by avoiding the recall of negative or painful memories. Therefore, those with a history of early trauma would be most at-risk for the development of OGM because these individuals have particularly upsetting memories to avoid recalling. Williams’ model also drew upon early sociolinguistic approaches to autobiographical memory in childhood (Nelson & Gruendel, 1981), where children were believed to first represent and retrieve events generically. Thus, Williams asserted that children who experienced early trauma would become developmentally arrested in the process of shifting memory from general to specific. Moreover, this pattern of overgeneral memory retrieval would be negatively reinforced through the avoidance of painful affect associated with memories of traumatic events, and may become generalized to all memory retrieval. Normative data on the development of autobiographical memory in children is not consistent in supporting the notion of a developmental arrest (see Howe, Toth, & Cicchetti, 2006 for review). For example, according to some developmental theories, young children’s event representations are initially quite specific, with autobiographical memory development proceeding from specific, verbatim, contextually driven representations to more general, generic, gist-like representations (Brainerd & Reyna, 2005; Howe, 2000; Mandler, 2004). However, other theories contend that children’s earliest event memories, though specific, are actually semantic in nature because young children lack autonoetic consciousness, or a sense of oneself recollecting the event (e.g., Perner & Ruffman, 1995; Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997). As such, episodic memory is believed to evolve out of the semantic memory system, and thus emerges later in development (Tulving, 2002). Nonetheless, Williams’ notion of functional avoidance and the central role of early trauma, whether or not a developmental arrest occurs, remain predominant features of current models of OGM. Overtime, unidimensional views on the etiology of OGM have been elaborated into more complex models as it has become clear that no one mechanism acting in isolation would explain the development of OGM (Williams et al., 2007). Based on the work of Conway and Pleydell-Pearce and their self-memory model (2000), Williams and colleagues’ updated model of OGM includes ideas about executive control and the involvement of the self-system. Named the CaR-FA-X model, this renewed model identified three primary mechanisms related to OGM: capture and rumination processes, when mnemonic information used in retrieval activates ruminative thinking; functional avoidance, when episodic material threatens to cause affective disturbance; and impaired executive capacity that limits an individual’s ability to focus on specific event retrieval in the face of distraction. According to this model, autobiographical memories are accessed in one of two ways: either by spontaneous retrieval following direct activation of autobiographical knowledge, or by a generative retrieval process. Integrating the work of Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000), the CaR-FA-X model highlights that during the top-down generative retrieval process, individuals rely on conceptual representations at the initial levels of memory search, of which the self is the main organizer. Therefore, those who have overly activated negative self-representations (such as those who are depressed) may become ‘‘captured’’ in their memory search at an overgeneral self-representation level because conceptual information about the self interferes with the ability to access specific episodic memories. In other words, rather than progressing from a general level to an event-specific representation, individuals who have highly activated negative self-representations may have difficulty progressing past the general stage, where they are likely to ruminate about negative attributes associated with the self. Additionally, the CaR-FA-X model adds that the process of progressively refining the pattern of memory activation to retrieve a specific event representation requires supervisory executive control to

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maintain goal-directedness and to inhibit irrelevant memories that are activated during the generative retrieval process. Finally, the notion of functional avoidance is retained, whereby early trauma remains a central risk factor for the development of OGM. Empirical support for aspects of Williams and colleagues’ (2007) model is growing. For example, the role of self-representations in OGM has been examined among adult and child samples (e.g., Crane, Barnhofer, & Williams, 2007; Spinhoven, Bockting, Kremers, Schene, & Williams, 2007; Valentino et al., 2009) and provides support for Williams’ notion of capture at the level of self- representations during autobiographical memory retrieval. Furthermore, experimental manipulations of rumination processes among depressed patients that reveal rumination, compared to distraction, are associated with less specific autobiographical memory (Watkins & Teasdale, 2001) and provide added support for a link between rumination processes and memory overgenerality. Additionally, there is some evidence for the role of impaired executive control in OGM retrieval (Dalgleish, Rolfe, Golden, Dunn, & Bamard, 2008; Dalgleish et al., 2007). Executive control refers to a variety of behaviors and abilities including directing attention (shifting, inhibiting, and focusing attention), manipulating information in working memory, and self-monitoring, each of which are critical for goal-directed behavior. A number of studies have demonstrated a negative correlation between verbal fluency (which requires executive function related processes such as efficient search of the lexicon, sustained attention, and response monitoring) and memory specificity (e.g., Dalgleish et al., 2007; Dritschel, Williams, Baddeley, & Nimmosmith, 1992). Further, there is some evidence that verbal fluency mediates the relationship between depressed mood and autobiographical memory specificity among adults (Dalgleish et al., 2007). The mediational effect of inhibitory control on OGM has also been demonstrated in children with depressed mood (Raes, Verstraeten, Bijttebier, Vasey, & Dalgleish, 2010). However, several other studies have failed to find associations between verbal fluency (and other EF tasks) and OGM (Baddeley, Emslie, & Nimmo-Smith, 1992; Williams & Broadbent, 1986). Moreover, research among trauma-exposed participants supports the salience of functional-avoidance in OGM, whereby greater posttraumatic stress, rather than executive control, was associated with increased overgenerality (Dalgleish et al., 2008). Additional theoretical accounts of OGM are similar to that of the CaR-FA-X model, focusing on cognitive resource allocation, ineffective emotion regulation, and/or analytical processing as mechanisms central to OGM development (Goodman et al., 2010; Moore & Zoellner, 2007). Related to capture/ rumination and impaired executive control, Moore and Zoellner (2007) suggest that diminished cognitive resources are common among individuals who are depressed and traumatized because processes like rumination, intrusions of memory, and suppression or avoidance of intrusive thoughts, are resource-consuming and are likely to interfere with memory search. Alternately, emotion regulation may be central to autobiographical memory retrieval (Goodman, Quas, & Ogle, 2010; Philippot, Schaefer, & Herbette, 2003). For example overgenerality may be a result of absent or ineffective emotion regulation (Moore & Zoellner, 2007). This hypothesis is consistent with studies that have demonstrated that emotion regulation through distraction can increase memory specificity, whereas rumination either has little effect or increases overgenerality (Park, Goodyer, & Teasdale, 2004; Watkins & Teasdale, 2004). Alternately, Goodman and colleagues (2010) suggest that overgeneral memory may result from the development of an avoidant emotion regulation strategy whereby individuals cope with stressful experiences through avoidance and emotional distancing. As such, avoidance, which is a central mechanism in Willams’ theories, may be conceptualized as a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy (Moore & Zoellner, 2007). Finally, integrating cognitive and emotion regulation theories, Watkins and Teasdale (2004) propose that OGM may be attributed to analytical self-processing, which is a cognitive style that is self-focused and ruminative, and can be differentiated from experiential processing (which involves mindful self-awareness and direct experience). Analytical self-processing is common among individuals with depression and maintains overgenerality. Interestingly, there is evidence that engaging people with analytical-cognitive styles in experiential processing tasks decreases OGM (Watkins & Teasdale, 2004). Similarly, mindfulness-based training programs, which focus on teaching individuals to engage in more experiential and less analytical self-processing, have demonstrated positive effects on participants’ memory and depressive symptoms (Williams, Teasdale, Segal, & Soulsby, 2000). On one hand this analytical processing style that encourages overgenerality is common to both MDD

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and PTSD; however, analytical rumination is also associated with anxiety disorders, and research to date among individuals with anxiety has not found increased overgenerality (Moore & Zoellner, 2007). In sum, etiological models of overgenerality have progressed from main effects models, which focused on functional avoidance and early trauma, to more complex theories that have considered additional cognitive and affective mechanisms related to OGM. Despite this significant progress, current theories remain primarily focused on cognitive explanations with principle emphasis on retrieval, rather than on additional factors that may affect encoding, storage and retrieval processes at multiple levels of ecology. For example, at the macrosystem level, cultural values may affect the encoding, storage and retrieval of autobiographical memories. Additional factors at other ecological levels need to be examined, such as mother–child reminiscing at the microsystem level, and neurobiological changes associated with early trauma and/or depression that occur at the level of ontegenic development. Moreover, aside from Williams’ functional-avoidance theory (1996), the aforementioned etiological theories are lacking a developmental component that accounts for the emergence of overgenerality over time.

Concepts in a developmental psychopathology approach to OGM Given the prevalence of OGM among specific clinical populations, particularly among depressed and traumatized individuals, relative to nonclinical populations, and the associations between OGM and subsequent episodes of affective disorder, it is essential to understand the developmental processes that contribute to the emergence and perpetuation of this phenomenon. Moreover, OGM may form a spectrum of severity from normative to pathological across the lifespan. For example, there is recent research demonstrating more OGM in elderly compared to young adults in a normative, nonclinical sample (Ros, Latorre, & Serrano, 2010). Thus, there appears to be a normative developmental increase in OGM from early to late adulthood. Investigations of OGM among children and adolescents have reported inconsistent developmental trends with some research indicating that age is positively correlated with OGM (Johnson, Greenhoot, Glisky, & McCloskey, 2005) and other research reporting an negative correlation (Valentino et al., 2009). Likely contributing to these inconsistencies are variations in the methodologies utilized to assess OGM, as well as the prevalence of OGM research conducted with at-risk child samples such as children who have been maltreated (Valentino et al., 2009) or exposed to violence (Johnson et al., 2005), rather than with typically developing children. To the best of our knowledge, no research on the typical development of autobiographical memory in children has focused on memory specificity and utilized a cue-word paradigm that can be compared with the clinical and cognitive literature of OGM among adults. Consequently, an important area for future research is to delineate normative developmental pathways of how memory specificity, or overgenerality, evolves with age. A developmental psychopathology perspective seeks to provide an account of adaptation and development by identifying risk and protective factors at multiple ecological levels, and by examining the interrelations of these systems across the lifespan (Cicchetti, 1993). Central to developmental psychopathology is the notion that typical and atypical developmental research informs one another. Therefore, applied to theory and research on overgenerality, we present a model that draws from research on the typical development of autobiographical memory to inform our understanding of the emergence of OGM in clinical and nonclinical populations. Furthermore, extant models have attempted to characterize or explain the presence of OGM, but have not placed the emergence of this phenomenon in a broad developmental context. Thus, the current paper proposes a comprehensive model of OGM by integrating research from cognitive and developmental disciplines, and by considering risk and protective factors at multiple levels of analysis. Ideas from several normative developmental theories regarding the emergence of autobiographical memory are integrated with current cognitive theories of OGM and insights into the additional factors/mechanisms that are relevant for both typical and atypical development of autobiographical memory are offered. Among the theories that are drawn upon are: ecological–transactional developmental theory (Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993; Cicchetti & Valentino, 2006), emergent recollection theory (Reese, 2009), fuzzy trace theory (Brainerd & Reyna, 2005), self-recognition theory (Howe & Courage, 1993; Howe & Courage, 1997), social

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cultural developmental theory (Fivush & Nelson, 2004; Nelson & Fivush, 2004), and trace integrity theory (Howe, 2000).

Developmental psychopathology model of overgeneral memory Emerging from Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) seminal ecological-developmental theory, many current theories and etiological models acknowledge the influences of transacting factors operating at cultural, contextual, familial, and individual ecologies (e.g., Belsky, 1980; Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993; Cicchetti & Rizley, 1981; Cicchetti & Valentino, 2006; Garbarino, 1977; Sameroff & Chandler, 1975). For example, the ecological–transactional model of child maltreatment (Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993; Cicchetti & Valentino, 2006) explains how risk and protective factors at each level of the ecology (macrosystem, exosystem, microsystem) exert reciprocal influences on one another, and interact with an individual’s ontogenic processes to shape the course of development, and to determine the amount of risk for maltreatment an individual faces at any given time. The levels of ecology most proximal to the individual have the greatest, and most direct influence on child development, relative to factors operating at more distal ecological levels. Therefore, there may be infinite permutations of risk and protective factors across and within each level of the ecology, providing multiple pathways to the occurrence of child maltreatment (Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993; Cicchetti & Valentino, 2006). Applying this developmental psychopathology framework to the development of overgeneral autobiographical memory, a model is proposed in which the challenges or supports provided to children by their family, community, and culture influence the development of autobiographical memory (see Fig. 1). This model additionally recognizes that children play an active role in their development as they interact with ecological influences and engage in the resolution of stage-salient developmental issues. Therefore, the presence of vulnerability factors at multiple levels of ecology may contribute

Macrosystem: e.g., cultural values, perceptions Risks/ Vulnerabilities

Exosystem e.g., community violence Microsystem

e.g., motherchild reminiscing, parental attachment Ontogenic Development e.g. , emotion regulation, attachment, self-system, representational models, EF, psychopathology, neurobiology

Protective Factors

Overgeneral Memory (OGM)

Risk Factors Protective Factors Fig. 1. A model of overgeneral memory in a developmental psychopathology organizational context that highlights salient individual difference factors at multiple ecological levels that have implications for OGM development (adapted from Cicchetti & Valentino, 2006). Note: EF = executive functions.

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to the unsuccessful resolution of stage-salient developmental tasks and set a child on a pathway towards maladaptive developmental outcomes (Cicchetti, 1990), including psychopathology and the emergence of overgenerality in their autobiographical memory recall. Moreover, this model serves as a framework to guide the review of developmental, clinical, and cognitive literatures on risk and protective factors at multiple ecological levels that are relevant for our understanding of OGM.

Macrosystem The macrosystem, the most distal ecological level, refers to cultural practices, values and beliefs that infuse individual and family lifestyles (Cicchetti & Valentino, 2006). Cross-cultural research consistently demonstrates cultural differences in autobiographical memory including differences in memory length, structure, and specificity (see Reese, 2009 for review). These differences emerge as early as the preschool period, where Chinese children, compared to European American preschool-aged children, have been found to tell shorter stories of the past (Wang, 2004). Similarly, Hispanic American children’s event narratives are shorter and less detailed than European American children’s narratives, regardless of whether English is their first or second language (Leyva, Reese, Grolnick, & Price, 2008; McCabe & Bliss, 2003). Most relevant to research on OGM, Europeans and European-Americans show greater abilities to access specific, one-time episodes than do Asians and Asian-Americans (MacDonald, Uesiliana, & Hayne, 2000; Mullen, 1994; Wang, 2004; Wang, Conway, & Hou, 2004; Wang & Ross, 2005). Moreover, Chinese preschool-aged children offer fewer memories and details of specific instances, compared to European American children (Han, Leichtman, & Wang, 1998; Wang, 2004, 2006b). For example, when asked to describe a time when the child did something special or fun, or a time when the child was scolded by their parents, European American children offered more elaborate and detailed memories that often emphasized their role in the event, whereas Chinese children provided more generalized accounts of routine social events and script. Although the methodology for the assessment of memory specificity in these studies differs from that of the cue-word paradigm most regularly used in the OGM literature (Williams & Broadbent, 1986), this important research suggests that cultural factors may play a significant role in shaping the specificity, content, and form of individuals’ autobiographical memory. Most explanations for cultural differences in autobiographical memory focus on cognitive and social factors that may affect memory retention (Wang, 2006a; Wang & Ross, 2007). For example, EuroAmericans have cultural emphasis on autonomy and individuality; as such, cognitive processes and resources may be allocated towards memory for discrete past events that become important components of a unique individual identity. In contrast, Asian culture emphasizes relatedness, which may influence individuals to retain more generic knowledge that involves social conventions or routines (i.e., going to church), and less episodic events (Wang, 2009). Therefore, differences in episodic memory may be attributed to differences in cognitive resources and social rehearsal, rather than to differences in the encoding of episodic information. Social practices that may reinforce these differential retention processes, specifically elaborate memory sharing which is critical in facilitating episodic remembering (Nelson & Fivush, 2004, see later section on mother–child reminiscing), is more often observed among Euro-American children and adults than among Asians (Mullen & Yi, 1995; Wang, 2006b). Indeed, a growing body of literature demonstrates clear cultural differences in maternal reminiscing style such that non-Western mothers are less elaborative during mother–child reminiscing than are mothers from Western cultures (Hayne & MacDonald, 2003; MacDonald et al., 2000; Mullen & Yi, 1995). More recent explanations of cultural differences in episodic memory additionally include cultural differences in perceptual processing and encoding (Wang, 2009). Specifically, research with Asian adults suggests that they view the world more holistically, perceiving relations and similarities, whereas Westerners view the world more analytically, perceiving smaller units of information. Moreover, Asians see the world as made up of fewer discrete past events, and as a result, remember fewer episodes (Wang, 2009). Therefore, cultural differences in perception, encoding, and retention processes each appear to be significant in understanding cultural differences in autobiographical memory.

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Exosystem The exosystem represents the social structures of the immediate context in which families and individuals function. These social structures include neighborhoods, schools, peer groups, churches and the workplace (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). The role of exosystem factors in relation to memory processes has not yet been examined. One notable exception explored the role of community violence in relation to children’s representational models and semantic memory (Lynch & Cicchetti, 1998). Community violence and representational models were associated with differences in the way children processed and retrieved information about positive and negative mother-referent words. Specifically, an interaction between exposure to community violence and the security of children’s representations predicted children’s semantic recall for mother attribute words, such that children with insecure models recalled the highest proportion of negative mother stimuli. Although extant research has not empirically examined exposure to community violence in relation to children’s autobiographical memory, it seems plausible that early traumatic events experienced in the community could affect the specificity of children’s autobiographical memory recall, and this effect may be moderated by children’s security of attachment to their caregivers. Additionally, there may be other exosystem factors that may serve as risk or protective factors in relation to children’s developing autobiographical memory including access to early intervention and/or education programs such as Head Start, and the quality of children’s school placements, that have yet to be systematically examined. Microsystem The microsystem, as defined by Belsky (1980), is represented by the family environment, and includes family dynamics as well as the parents’ developmental histories, psychological resources, and parenting styles. Research originating in the developmental literature has consistently demonstrated the central role of parent–child interactions in typical autobiographical memory development. Specifically, the sociocultural (Fivush & Nelson, 2004; Nelson & Fivush, 2004) and emergent recollection (Reese, 1999; Reese & Fivush, 2008) models of autobiographical memory emphasize the salience of past event conversations between parent and child in the development of children’s autobiographical memory, sense of self, and coping skills. Additionally, attachment theory provides a framework, not only for understanding how parent–child interactions affect relationships and behavior, but also for how memories are encoded, elaborated on, and retrieved (Chae, Ogle, & Goodman, 2009). In the following sections, the empirical evidence which supports these theories is reviewed. These reminiscing and attachment-related processes are not only important for typical autobiographical memory development, but also are likely to play an important role in the development of OGM. Mother–child reminiscing Correlational research, which has focused on the role of maternal reminiscing about shared past events with children, suggests that parent–child conversational interactions are critical in fostering developmental changes in skills for remembering (Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006; Ornstein, Haden, & Hedrick, 2004). There are clear individual differences in maternal reminiscing style (e.g., Fivush & Fromhoff, 1988; McCabe & Peterson, 1991). Mothers who are able to talk in rich, detailed ways with their children about past events (in contrast to using a low elaborative or repetitive style), have children who are able to discuss the past more elaboratively during parent–child conversations (Engel, 1995; Fivush & Fromhoff, 1988; McCabe & Peterson, 1991; Reese, Haden, & Fivush, 1993). Similarly, maternal elaborative reminiscing is positively related to children’s independent memory recall, outside of the context of the mother–child discourse (Hudson, 1993; Leichtman, Pillemer, Wang, Koreishi, & Han, 2000). Longitudinal research reveals that elaborative maternal reminiscing is associated with more detailed memory for past events in children, both concurrently and subsequently. For example, Reese and colleagues (1993) assessed mother–child reminiscing when children were 40, 58, and 70 months of age. Over time mothers and children each contributed more new information to the conversations, and at each age, maternal elaborativeness was associated with children’s memory responding.

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Moreover, maternal elaborativeness at 40 months was positively correlated with children’s recall at 58 and 70 months. Consistent with this research, Harley and Reese (1999) found that maternal elaborativeness with children who were even younger (12 months), predicted children’s autobiographical memory recall 1 year later (Harley & Reese, 1999). Thus maternal reminiscing plays an important role in children’s early autobiographical memory development. Experimental research provides further evidence for the central role of parent–child reminiscing in relation to children’s autobiographical memory. In these experimental designs, elements of an elaborative reminiscing style have been taught to parents of middle and low socioeconomic statuses and of diverse backgrounds (Boland, Haden, & Ornstein, 2003; Peterson, Jesso, & McCabe, 1999; Reese & Newcombe, 2007; Van Bergen, Salmon, Dadds, & Allen, 2009). Following training in elaborative reminiscing (when children were 1.5–2.5 years old), mothers were more elaborative than those who were not trained, and children of elaborative mothers provided richer memories at ages 2.5 and 3.5 than children of untrained mothers. Additionally, children of the trained mothers had more accurate memories, but only for those who initially had high levels of self-awareness (Reese & Newcombe, 2007). Elaborative mother–child reminiscing may enhance children’s autobiographical memory for several reasons. For example, the act of reminiscing itself serves as rehearsal of the event specific information. Additionally, parent-led reminiscing results in the creation of a narrative of the past event, which assists children in making sense of the experience and in understanding how this event fits into a child’s autobiography and self-concept (Bird & Reese, 2006). Therefore, mother–child reminiscing affects not only memory content, but it also serves an important function in children’s self and emotional development. In particular, elaborative mother–child reminiscing has been positively associated with children’s self-understanding, coping skills, and reduced internalizing and externalizing symptoms (Haden, Haine, & Fivush, 1997; Nelson & Fivush, 2004; Peterson & McCabe, 1992; Peterson & McCabe, 1994; Wareham & Salmon, 2006). Furthermore, these mother–child reminiscing discussions may serve to help children attribute meaning to past events, and to understand how events relate to children’s other experiences. As such, mother–child reminiscing may facilitate the development of gist memory traces, which are a critical component of children’s developing autobiographical memory and knowledge (Brainerd & Reyna, 2005). In-depth discussion of the causes and consequences of emotions are critical in helping children to understand the personal meaning of negative experiences, and to integrate them into a coherent autobiography (Bird & Reese, 2006). It may be the case that children who have experienced early maltreatment have not had the opportunity to reminisce about these events with their caregiver, and are motivated to avoid their recall because they have not found a way to assimilate their experience within their sense of self, or to make a cohesive narrative about the event. Research indicates that mothers from abusing families engage in fewer verbal interactions with their children during infancy (Valentino, Cicchetti, Toth, & Rogosch, 2006) and the preschool years (Alessandri, 1992). Moreover, maltreating mothers are less likely to engage in a discussion including causes and consequences of emotion with their school-aged children (Shipman & Zeman, 1999). Therefore, insufficient parent–child reminiscing in combination with early traumatic experiences may significantly increase risk for the development of OGM. In sum, developmental research on children’s autobiographical memory demonstrates that elaborative maternal reminiscing facilitates young children’s remembering of past events. To date, extant research has not examined maternal elaborative reminiscing in relation to the specificity of children’s autobiographical memory, instead, children’s contributions to conversations about parent-nominated past events have been assessed. Therefore, it will be essential for future research to explore the role of parent–child conversations in the specificity, or lack thereof, in children’s autobiographical memory retrieval. Alternately, mother–child reminiscing processes may indirectly influence children’s autobiographical memory through its effects on children’s self-concept, coping, and psychopathology, which are further empirical questions that need to be addressed. Parental attachment In addition to parent–child interactional processes, microsystem processes include factors such as the personal resources of parents. Among those parental resources relevant to children’s developing

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memory is parental attachment history. According to attachment theory, individuals develop internal working models (IWM), or mental representations of the self, and other, through early interactions with their primary caregiver (Bowlby, 1969). IWMs are then used as organizing schema through which individuals interpret the world, encode information, and anticipate future behavior. As such, individual differences in attachment may influence the encoding, rehearsal and retrieval of information, including personal memories (Chae et al., 2009; Dykas & Cassidy, 2011). For example, Bowlby theorizes that children who experience regular rejection from their primary caregiver develop an avoidant attachment organization, which may include the development of an unconscious defensive exclusion strategy. This defensive exclusion strategy allows individuals to avoid experiencing the negative affect associated with reminders of attachment-related information by limiting the processing of information that may activate the attachment system (Bowlby, 1980; Main, 1990). Such defensive exclusion is strikingly similar to Williams’ functional avoidance theory (1996), and when present in parents and/ or children, defensive avoidance associated with avoidant attachment is likely involved in the development of OGM. Turning to the empirical literature, a recent review of children’s memory and suggestibility includes parental attachment as a replicable individual difference factor relevant to children’s reporting accuracy (Bruck & Melnyk, 2004). For example, research on children’s memory for a stressful medical procedure indicates that parental attachment predicts children’s memory errors (e.g., Goodman, Quas, Batterman-Faunce, Riddlesberger, & Kuhn, 1994). In particular, children of parents who are high on attachment anxiety made more commission and omission errors in their memory of an inoculation event (Alexander, Goodman et al., 2002). Additionally, there was an interaction between parental attachment avoidance and child stress upon memory. Among those parents with low attachment avoidance, there was a positive relation between stress and memory, where stress facilitated children’s memory. However, among those parents with high attachment avoidance, there was a negative relation between stress and memory (Alexander, Goodman et al., 2002). Therefore, high attachment avoidance among parents may be associated with the provision of less support to children during or after a stressful event, and may be associated with less reminiscing, each of which may contribute to overgenerality in children’s memory recall. Consistent with this hypothesis, Kuyken and colleagues (2006), suggested that OGM may develop within the social milieu (e.g., families) characterized by emotional avoidance, in which such an emotionally avoidant cognitive style confers risk both for later depression and OGM (Kuyken et al., 2006); however, to date, no empirical studies have examined these purported relations. Additionally, adult attachment may influence parent’s own ability to recall specific autobiographical memories. In fact, parents’ ability to recall specific episodes from their personal past largely influences their attachment classification during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). In the AAI, participants are asked to choose adjectives to describe past attachment relationships, and then to recall specific memories as exemplars. Securely attached adults are able to provide specific, coherent and integrated narratives of their own experiences in close relationships, whereas insecurely attached adults, particularly those who receive an avoidant/unresolved classification, are characterized by ‘‘overgeneralized, emotionally flat, and incoherent narratives’’ of their relationships (Sales, 2009, p. 203). Thus another important empirical question is whether the cognitive style indicative of avoidance and lack of resolution in adult attachment are exemplars of overgenerality. Furthermore, maternal coherence on the AAI is positively correlated with mothers’ elaborative reminiscing and with interpersonal aspects of children’s self-concept (Reese & Fivush, 2008). Therefore, maternal attachment may contribute to children’s memory specificity directly or indirectly through reminiscing and/or self-concept (Reese & Fivush, 2008). Beyond parental attachment, there are likely additional parental resources that are linked to children’s developing autobiographical memory; however, none have been examined in relation to the specificity of children’s autobiographical memory. Among those microsystem factors that may be associated with children’s autobiographical memory, maternal depression and trauma history may be most relevant.

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Ontogenic As individuals develop over time, they are faced with several stage-salient developmental challenges that are hierarchically organized (Sroufe, 1979; Sroufe & Rutter, 1984). The extent to which each stage-salient task is successfully resolved influences how that developmental issue is incorporated into psychological and biological systems, and contributes to an individual’s ability to resolve subsequent developmental tasks. Therefore, early challenges in resolving stage-salient tasks may render individuals more vulnerable to the development of overgeneral autobiographical memory, among other maladaptive outcomes. In this section, early developmental issues that are theoretically relevant to the emergence and maintenance of overgeneral autobiographical memory are highlighted. These issues include the development of (1) emotion regulation and knowledge, (2) a secure attachment relationship, (3) the self- system, (4) representational models, (5) and executive functioning. Additionally, the emergence of psychopathology and neurobiological development in relation to OGM are discussed. Emotion regulation/knowledge Autobiographical memory is often accompanied by heightened emotional reactions (e.g., Pillemer, 1998) and emotion is often conceptualized as central to autobiographical remembering (Christianson & Safer, 1996; Wang, 2009). Moreover, early models of OGM focused on functional avoidance, as a passive emotion regulation strategy that prevents recall of painful memories by truncating autobiographical memory search at the general or categorical level (Williams, 1996). Thus, the development of emotion regulatory capacities is relevant to our understanding of OGM. Developmentally, emotion regulation is conceptualized as the ability to modulate one’s emotional arousal such that an optimal level of engagement with the environment is fostered (Cicchetti & Valentino, 2006; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). Emotion regulation is acquired through both intrinsic features and extrinsic socio-emotional experiences within the context of early parent–child interactions (Thompson, 1990). The development of early emotion regulation skills is a critical stage-salient task within the first years of life, as the ability to modulate one’s own emotional state allows children to successfully explore, respond and adapt to the world around them. Despite the focus on affect regulation in theoretical models of OGM, research has yet to thoroughly examine the construct of emotion regulation in OGM development. Several processes underlie the development of emotion regulation including emotional expression, recognition, and understanding or knowledge. Among these processes, children’s emotion knowledge has recently been examined in relation to autobiographical memory in preschool-aged children (Wang, 2006b). In this cross-cultural, longitudinal study of children at ages 3, 3.5, and 4.5 years of age, children’s emotion knowledge uniquely predicted their autobiographical memory across all groups and time points, controlling for language abilities. Furthermore, emotion knowledge at age 3.5 mediated culture effects on autobiographical memory at age 4.5 (Wang, 2006b). Consistent with this view, Goodman and colleagues propose an emotion–regulation account of OGM (Goodman et al., 2010) such that childhood trauma may lead to fewer specific memories in the subset of victims who use a more avoidant emotion–regulation strategies. For example, Harris et al. (2009) found that reduced autobiographical memory specificity was related to the tendency to use avoidant forms of coping (e.g., distancing coping) among adolescents and adults with child sexual abuse histories. Therefore, the extent to which children have developed an understanding about emotions and the manner through which they regulate these emotions appear to be critical factors in contributing to autobiographical memory. Future research should more thoroughly examine emotion knowledge and regulatory processes in relation to autobiographical memory specificity. Child attachment Development of a secure attachment relationship between a child and caregiver is another critical stage-salient developmental task. Throughout the first year of life, parent–child interactions create the context through which infants may derive a sense of security, which they then use as a base from which they may explore the world (Sroufe, 1979). Through caregiver sensitivity, responsiveness, and consistency, children use these regularities to develop internal models and cre-

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ate expectations for the future. Ultimately, the child forms representational models of the self and of others that reflect early interaction experiences with the primary caregiver. These representational models, then, influence and organize children’s affect, cognitions, and expectations about future relationships (Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993; Sroufe, Carlson, & Shulman, 1993). Therefore, attachment not only influences children’s subsequent interpersonal development, but also may influence additional aspects of development including social information processing and memory (Dykas & Cassidy, 2011). Insecure attachment has been related to memory performance in both children and adults (Alexander, Quas, & Goodman, 2002; Goodman, 2005). Several empirical investigations have examined associations between children’s attachment and their memory for positive and negative emotional information (Alexander & Edelstein, 2001; Belsky, Spritz, & Crnic, 1996; Kirsh & Cassidy, 1997; Reese & Farrant, 2003; Schaaf, Alexander, & Goodman, 2008). Although few in number, these studies cohere to support that parent–child attachment has implications for children’s memory. In two of the investigations, children with secure attachment relationships were able to recall attachment-related information better than were children with insecure attachments (Alexander & Edelstein, 2001; Kirsh & Cassidy, 1997). Specific to event-based memory, another investigation demonstrated that attachment classification in infancy was predictive of memory for lab-based emotional events at 3 years of age; securely attached children remembered more positive than negative events, whereas insecurely attached children recalled more negative than positive events (Belsky et al., 1996). Additionally, attachment security is related to mother–child reminiscing such that mothers of securely attached children are more elaborative during reminiscing about past experiences than are mothers of insecurely attached children (Fivush & Vasudeva, 2002), and insecurely attached children recall less about these past events (Reese & Farrant, 2003). In sum, attachment security is an important individual difference factor that appears to have a significant role in children’s memory development. Although there are no studies directly linking attachment insecurity to OGM, a recent synthesis of research on the association between attachment and social information processing highlights insecure attachment as a predictor of social information processes including memory (Dykas & Cassidy, 2011). Specifically, Dykas and Cassidy (2011) theorize that individuals with insecure attachment process attachment-related social information in one of two ways depending on the extent to which the information is likely to cause psychological pain. If psychological pain is likely to result from processing the social information, then insecure individuals will defensively avoid or exclude this information from further processing; whereas, if the information is not likely to lead to psychological pain, then it will be processed in negatively biased schematic ways. As such, consideration of attachment security and whether autobiographical memories are likely to lead to psychological pain may be important predictors of OGM, and may help to explain discrepant findings regarding the retrieval of specific memories to positively versus negatively valenced cues. As such, the extant research suggests that the relation of attachment to OGM is an area of research worthy of exploration. Consistent with Dykas and Cassidy’s view, attachment insecurity may be an important mechanism through which early traumatic experiences are related to OGM. For example, attachment insecurity among maltreated infants has been documented at rates as high as 80–90% (Carlson, Cicchetti, Barnett, & Braunwauld, 1989) where disorganized attachment is the predominant attachment pattern observed. Moreover, given that attachment organization relates to the development of representational models of self and others, and that the self is central to autobiographical memory retrieval, disorganization of attachment (in the self-system) may well relate to the development of OGM. Self development In toddlerhood, the stage-salient task shifts towards the development of an autonomous self. Between 18 and 36 months of age, children begin to rely less on the parent–child relationship, and more on themselves, to provide responsibility for self-management and the regulation of affect. Not only is an autonomous-self critical for subsequent social and emotional development, it is believed to be a key developmental milestone for the development of autobiographical memory (Howe & Courage, 1993, 1997; Howe, Courage, & Edison, 2003).

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According to self-recognition theory, the development of a cognitive self is a prerequisite for autobiographical memory (Howe & Courage, 1997) because one needs to have an understanding of a self before one can encode and retrieve memories as part of one’s personal past. Typically, the emergence of self has been examined through investigations of visual self-recognition (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979). Several visual self-recognition studies have provided support for the positive association between the emergence of a cognitive self and autobiographical memory. For example Prudhomme (2005) demonstrated that 20-months old children who passed the visual self-recognition task display more mature verbal declarative memory than did those who did not recognize themselves. Moreover, longitudinal work reveals that self-recognition at 19 months predicts the volume of children’s early memory reports at 25 and 32 months (Harley & Reese, 1999). The development of the capacity for visual self-recognition appears to be a highly canalized ability that is more related to maturational than to environmental influences. For example, when controlling for cognitive abilities, the timing of the emergence of visual-self recognition is no different between maltreated and nonmaltreated toddlers (Schneider-Rosen & Cicchetti, 1991). Nonetheless, affective differences emerge such that maltreated toddlers demonstrate more negative affect upon viewing the self than do nonmaltreated toddlers (Schneider-Rosen & Cicchetti, 1991). To date, longitudinal research has not yet explored potential implications of increased negative affect in response to the self during toddlerhood on emerging autobiographical memory. Importantly, subsequent research has suggested that the role of self-awareness on children’s autobiographical memory may be mediated by mothers’ reminiscing style (Reese, 2002). For example, longitudinal research reveals that mothers became more elaborative over time with children who had higher initial levels of self-awareness (Reese, 2002). Similarly, children with higher self-awareness have been found to demonstrate a steeper rise in their independent memory reports, especially if they had an elaborative mother (Harley & Reese, 1999). Thus, although children’s early self-awareness plays a role in their autobiographical memory, self-awareness appears to interact with maternal elaboration in complex ways to affect memory development. Representational models Mental representational models are believed to play a guiding role in the continuity of development. Emerging from early attachment relationships, which become internalized as the first representations of self and other, representational models foster the maintenance of developmental trajectories as they organize expectations and schemas about the self, and for relationships (Bowlby, 1969; Cicchetti & Toth, 1995; Sroufe, 1979). Children’s developing representational models of self and others are particularly relevant for children’s memory. Information-processing research consistently supports the self-as-schema model in adults (Greenwald & Banaji, 1989; Markus, 1977; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), where the self functions as a prototype containing a collection of features that the person views as self-descriptive. The self-schema is then stored in long-term memory and both facilitates and biases the processing of personally relevant information. For example, in applying Craik and Lockhart’s (1972) depth of processing paradigm to the understanding of self-schema, Rogers and colleagues (1977) demonstrated that adjectives that are processed under self- referent conditions are better remembered than semantically or structurally encoded words; thus, the self serves as a deep encoding structure. Developmentally, children’s self-schema (and/or representational models) become more stable and elaborate over time, as children come to associate more features and experiences with their sense of self. As such, older children are better able to use the self to facilitate recall during the depth-of-processing paradigm than are younger children (Hammen & Zupan, 1984; Valentino, Cicchetti, Rogosch, & Toth, 2008). Therefore, the self is a salient organizing schema that allows for information related to the self to be better remembered than that which is unrelated to the self. As reviewed earlier, current models of autobiographical memory and OGM emphasize the salience of the self in organizing one’s autobiographical memory retrieval (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Williams et al., 2007). In particular, negative self- representations are believed to interfere with an individual’s ability to retrieve a specific autobiographical memory. As such, it is important to consider who might be at risk for the development of negative self-representations in understanding one’s vulnerability for OGM. Children of depressed mothers (Toth, Rogosch, Sturge-Apple, & Cicchetti, 2009), as

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well as maltreated children (Toth, Cicchetti, Macfie, & Emde, 1997; Toth, Cicchetti, Macfie, Rogosch, & Maughan, 2000) represent two groups among whom high rates of negative self and maternal representations have been documented. Regarding the relation between self-representations and OGM, few investigations have directly examined this issue (Crane et al., 2007; Spinhoven et al., 2007; Valentino et al., 2009). As reviewed earlier, studies of adults provide support for Williams’ notion of ‘‘capture’’ at the level of self-representations during autobiographical memory retrieval, at least among adults with a history of depression (Crane et al., 2007; Spinhoven et al., 2007). Similarly, a recent examination of OGM among abused, neglected and nonmaltreated children revealed that negative self-representations predicted children’s OGM, but did not fully mediate the relation between child abuse and OGM (Valentino et al., 2009). Therefore, negative self-representations may be one pathway through which OGM develops, but current research suggests that this relationship does not account for links between childhood abuse and OGM. Executive functioning As development proceeds into adolescence, the frontal lobes approach maturation and significant improvements are seen in a group of abilities known as executive functions. Executive functions include processes which are responsible for planning, cognitive flexibility, abstract thinking, cognitive fluency, selective attention, initiating appropriate actions, and inhibiting inappropriate actions (Stuss & Knight, 2002). Given that executive functions have been recognized as having an important supervisory role during autobiographical memory retrieval (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Williams et al., 2007), recent explanations for OGM have suggested that OGM might be accounted for by impaired executive control, which is often associated with depressive psychopathology (Dalgleish et al., 2007). Indeed studies among adults provide evidence for the role of impaired executive control in OGM (Dalgleish et al., 2007, 2008). However, other studies have failed to find associations between verbal fluency (and other EF tasks) and OGM (e.g., Williams & Broadbent, 1986). In a comprehensive assessment of task performance on multiple executive functioning tasks, Dalgleish and colleagues (2007) concluded that inconsistencies in the literature on the relation of EF to OGM may be attributed to variation across EF tasks, particularly in whether or not task scores reflected participant errors. Therefore, systematic research that focuses on individual subcomponent EF processes is warranted. In particular, inhibitory control has been identified as one of the executive functioning processes that may be most closely associated with OGM development (Dalgleish et al., 2007; Raes et al., 2010; Williams et al., 2007). Recent research among school-aged children demonstrates a relationship between OGM and self-reported inhibitory control, and revealed that inhibitory control partially mediated the link between children’s depressed mood and OGM (Raes et al., 2010). This work suggests that inhibitory control may be an important mechanism in explaining pathways between psychopathology and OGM. Future research utilizing standardized executive functioning assessment measures, and targeting specific EF component processes will be essential in continuing to elucidate underlying neuropsychological processes associated with OGM and warrant further attention. Psychopathology In maintaining an ecological transactional perspective on child development, failure to resolve stage salient developmental tasks is believed to increase an individual’s risk for subsequent maladaptive development and the emergence of psychopathology (Cicchetti & Valentino, 2006). Moreover, the absence of adequate environmental supports may both increase the likelihood of unsuccessful resolution of stage-salient tasks, and increase risk for maladaptation. Therefore, we could expect that deviations in the typical development of emotion regulation, attachment, self-development, representational models, and executive functioning, or maladaptations in other levels of ecology, might increase risk for the development of OGM directly, or indirectly through the emergence of psychopathology. Research to date demonstrates a strong association between particular forms of psychopathology and OGM. In particular, a large body of research among adults provides evidence that individuals with clinical depression and/or depressed mood demonstrate more overgenerality in their autobiographical memory recall than nondepressed individuals (see Moore & Zoellner, 2007 for review). Additionally,

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increased OGM has also been found among adults with PTSD (McNally et al., 1994, 1995) compared to those without PTSD. However, other research suggests that PTSD (Drummond, Astell, & Dritschel, 2005) or posttraumatic avoidance symptoms (Kuyken et al., 2006; Ogle et al., submitted), might be associated with less OGM; as such, the direction of effects between PTSD and OGM remains uncertain. Despite strong associations between depression and posttraumatic stress with OGM, it is unclear whether psychopathology is causal in, or is a correlate of, OGM processes. To address this issue, recent research has begun to focus on OGM among children and adolescents to facilitate identification of developmental pathways to psychopathology and OGM, and has attempted to differentiate the roles of depression and trauma in the emergence of overgenerality. Initial research on OGM with children and adolescents report associations between OGM and concurrent depression in a clinical sample of adolescents (Park, Goodyer, & Teasdale, 2002) and between OGM and concurrent depressed mood in a community sample of children (Drummond, Dritschel, Astell, O’Carroll, & Dalgleish, 2006). These studies confirm an important pathway between depression and OGM among children and adolescents; but because they do not address the role of childhood trauma, the conclusions that may be drawn from them regarding the etiology of OGM are limited. Addressing some of these gaps in the literature, two additional studies explored the roles of both depression and trauma in OGM among children and adolescents. For example, Kuyken and colleagues (2006) compared OGM in clinically depressed adolescents, 12–18 years of age, with and without a reported history of trauma to never-depressed children. Results revealed increased OGM in both clinical groups of children, demonstrating for the first time that OGM may develop without early traumatic experiences. Similarly, Vrielynck and colleagues demonstrated that depressed children were less specific in recall than never depressed controls, and this effect remained significant even after controlling for traumatic life events (Vrielynck, Deplus, & Philippot, 2007). Although both studies advance the field in terms of the etiological role of childhood depression in OGM development, independent of trauma history, neither examined the role of childhood trauma independent of depression, or potential interactive effects between these two risk factors. Alternately, Valentino and colleagues (2009) compared OGM among abused, neglected and nonmaltreated school-aged children in a community sample, and found that abused children demonstrated increased OGM compared to the other groups, even after controlling for depressive symptomatology. Therefore, it appears that both early trauma and depression can be independent risk factors for OGM development, but are also often co-morbid. It remains unclear whether depression and/or trauma are necessary for the development of OGM, or are the result of some other process that is associated with both OGM and psychopathology. For example, research among never-depressed adults suggests that OGM is a marker of vulnerability to depression, rather than a marker of depression itself, or at least to depressive symptoms (Gibbs & Rude, 2004). Evidence that memory remains overgeneral in individuals with a history of affective disorders, even when they are not currently experiencing a depressive episode (e.g., Mackinger et al., 2000), further supports that OGM may be a stable, cognitive trait that confers vulnerability to depression. Prospective longitudinal studies of risk factors at multiple levels of analysis will be informative in determining how such a cognitive style could emerge. Neurobiology Given emphasis on depression and/or trauma in the etiology of OGM, it is important to consider the underlying functioning and structure of brain regions and neurochemical systems that are involved in the stress response, and related to depression and/or trauma (see Bremner, 2008; Gunnar & Vazquez, 2006 for reviews). In particular, recent neuroendocrine research has proposed biological explanations for OGM retrieval (Schlosser et al., 2010). For example, following acute administration of glucocorticoids, semantic memory retrieval in healthy adults is impaired (Wolf, 2008). Extending this work to autobiographical memory specificity, there is evidence that healthy adults generate more OGM after cortisol administration compared to a placebo (Buss, Wolf, Witt, & Hellhammer, 2004). As such, the authors concluded that alterations in the Limbic Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal (LHPA) system may account for reduced specificity of autobiographical memory recall (Buss et al., 2004). Common to both depression and early traumatic experiences are alterations to the LHPA system. For example, cortisol hypersecretion is a commonly observed neuroendocrine characteristic of depressive disorder (Barden, 2004; Parker, Schatzberg, & Lyons, 2003). Additionally, reduced responsiveness

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to glucocorticoids, is often observed among individuals with depression, (e.g., Holsboer, 2000). Similarly, individuals with PTSD, as well as those who have experienced child sexual and physical abuse (with or without resulting PTSD), demonstrate disruptions to the LHPA axis (Bremner, 2008; Gunnar & Vazquez, 2006), however, the pattern of these results appears to be quite complex as neurobiological systems interact with risk factors at multiple levels of analysis. For example, both hyper-cortisolism and hypo-cortisolism have been documented among maltreated children (Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2001a, 2001b). A comprehensive discussion of neuroendocrine research related to depression and trauma has been well-articulated in other reviews (Goodyer, Park, & Herbert, 2001; Gunnar & Vazquez, 2006); thus, the focus here is to draw attention towards potential neurobiological mechanisms, particularly LHPA system alterations, which may be informative in clarifying developmental pathways to OGM. Studies have also revealed structural brain alterations in patients with a history of stress and PTSD as well as other psychiatric disorders. For example, in one study of adults with abuse-related PTSD, significant reductions in left hippocampal volume were found compared to the matched controls (Bremner et al., 1997). Similarly, research among adults with chronic PTSD reveals smaller left and right hippocampal volume (Kitayama, Vaccarino, Kutner, Weiss, & Bremner, 2005). Given the central role of the hippocampus in memory functioning, stress-induced hippocampal dysfunction may also play a central role in OGM development. To date, very few MRI and fMRI studies of traumatized or depressed individuals include the examination of memory, especially among children; such research would undoubtedly inform etiological models of OGM. Future research directions In summary, the current review urges researchers interested in OGM to consider a developmental psychopathology perspective and to take into account risk and protective factors at multiple ecological levels that may inform our understanding of OGM. The ecological transactional model proposed here is, of course, speculative because research has not yet explored many of the mechanisms hypothesized to explain the emergence of OGM. As such, directions for future research are discussed. A central tenant of the developmental psychopathology perspective is that research on typical and atypical developmental processes is mutually informative. Applied to OGM, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of normative changes in the ability to retrieve specific memories across the lifespan are needed. Recent research has demonstrated a decrease in memory specificity in normative aging (Ros et al., 2010); however, patterns of autobiographical memory specificity in childhood remain unclear. Certainly theories such as fuzzy trace theory (Brainerd & Reyna, 2005) and trace integrity theory (Howe, 2000), and their supporting empirical evidence, suggest that children’s earliest memories are quite specific, even verbatim, whereas, more generic, gist-like representations emerge later (Brainerd & Reyna, 2005; Howe, 2000; Mandler, 2004). However, others argue that these initial early memories, which may be quite specific, are not truly autobiographical in nature as young children do not yet have a sense of one’s self recollecting one’s own personal past (e.g., Perner & Ruffman, 1995; Wheeler et al., 1997). Instead these memories are believed to be semantic, with autobiographical memories emerging later in development, and evolving out of generalized sematic schemas (Tulving, 2002). Moreover, the executive control purported to be central during autobiographical memory search continues to mature through adolescence. Thus, further research on normative developmental trends in the specificity of autobiographical memory retrieval is warranted. Elucidation of typical developmental patterns and processes will facilitate our understanding of impairments in autobiographical memory retrieval. Additionally, longitudinal assessments of OGM and analysis of individual differences in memory specificity among normative samples of children will help to address whether elevated OGM may be a trait that identifies vulnerability for the subsequent development of depression. Drawing from the proposed model, future research should strive to examine the relationships among factors at multiple ecological levels on OGM development. To date, little if any research on OGM has considered the influence of contextual factors apart from early traumatic experiences. Therefore, research that links, for example, microsystem processes such as mother–child reminiscing with OGM development is needed. Moreover, as researchers come to recognize that OGM is multiply deter-

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mined through interactions of many risk and protective factors, research that can examine the transactional relationships between factors at multiple levels of analysis will be the most influential in advancing knowledge in this area. Once the identification of factors that confer risk or provide protection against the development of OGM occurs, experimental research will be important to rigorously test our assumptions regarding causality. Furthermore, translational research that targets the modification of risk factors through intervention programs may reduce OGM in the short-term, and perhaps aid in the prevention of depression. For example, if elaborative mother–child reminiscing is associated with greater specificity in autobiographical memory recall, then educating mothers how to become more elaborative may improve the specificity of their children’s autobiographical memory recall and reduce risk for affective disorders. Lastly, it will be important for researchers to consider new methodologies for assessing OGM processes. To date, virtually all research on OGM utilizes some variation of the classic emotion word cue paradigm (Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT); Williams & Broadbent, 1986). Although there are several benefits to the consistency with which this measure is employed, such as the ease of comparability of findings across studies, the use of a single paradigm is also somewhat limiting. Some novel manipulations of the AMT have emerged in recent years, for example asking individuals to report a general or categorical memory, rather than one that is specific (Dalgleish et al., 2007). Similarly, it would be particularly exciting if classic methods could be paired with methods that may assess OGM at multiple levels of analysis. For example, utilizing measures of physiological reactivity during administration of the AMT might provide additional insight into mechanisms that underlie OGM processes, and could potentially address some confounds in the AMT, which include that performance on the AMT is influenced by the participant’s willingness to respond and ability to articulate memories. Therefore, as etiological models of OGM become more sophisticated to include risk and protective processes at multiple levels of analysis and across multiple social contexts, methodological approaches to OGM research must be advanced. References Alessandri, S. (1992). Mother–child interactional correlates of maltreated and nonmaltreated children’s play behavior. Development and Psychopathology, 4(2), 257–270. doi:10.1017/S0954579400000134. Alexander, K., & Edelstein, R. S. (2001). Children’s attachment and memory for an experienced event. Minneapolis, MN: Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. 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