Dependent Variables

2.3.1 Autobiographical Memory Cueing Task (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986)

The autobiographical memory cueing task (AMT; see Appendix 3) is a widely used method for studying AMs (Williams & Broadbent, 1986; Williams & Dritschel, 1988; Goddard et al., 1996; Williams, Barnhofer, Crane, & Beck, 2005). This task provides a direct assessment of an individual’s ability to retrieve specific AMs. In this task, a series of cue words are presented individually and the participant is asked to retrieve a specific memory, as quickly as possible, in response to each cue word. A specific AM was explained to the participants in

terms of being a personally experienced event that happened on a particular day and place. In most investigations employing this task with depressed or dysphoric participants, emotionally valence words are used as cues. In this series of experiments, we employed the same five positive words (i.e., happy, safe, interested, successful, and surprised) and five negative words (i.e., sorry, angry, clumsy, hurt, and lonely) as used by Evans et al. (1992) and Goddard et al. (1996). Words were presented orally and visually (using an index card) to the participants in the same order listed above, with positive and negative words alternating. Participants were given a maximum of 60 seconds to retrieve a memory to each cue word. If a response was not given in that time, a score of 60 seconds was recorded and the next word was given. If the participant gave a categoric AM (e.g., playing football on Monday afternoons) within that time period, they were prompted to recall a specific instance. When a categoric AM was given within the 60 seconds and prompts were then administered for retrieving a specific AM.

Responses on the AMT cueing task could take one of four forms: a specific AM, a categoric AM, an extended AM and an omission. A specific AM refers to a memory for a personally experienced event occurring at a particular time and place and lasting less than one day (e.g., “going to a cinema with Jenny last Friday night”). A categoric AM refers to a personally experienced event that happens repetitively (e.g., “attending a computer course on Wednesday afternoons”).

An extended AM refers to a personally experienced event that occurred at a particular time and place yet lasted more than one day (e.g., “my first year at university in St Andrews”). Finally, omissions refer to any failures to retrieve a

memory. All the AM responses were coded by the author. A second rater who was blind to the membership of the participants coded a random sample of AM responses from each study using the AMT to establish inter-rater reliability. Before the task, all participants completed a practice trial with feedbacks to ensure that they understand the instruction and the requirement of the task. During the task, prompts were given if the first response was not a specific memory. Number of specific memories was calculated from the 10 possible responses to the cue words.

2.3.2 Means-Ends Problem-Solving Procedures (MEPS; Platt & Spivack, 1975a)

The MEPS is a hypothetical SPS task that has been widely used with clinically depressed and dysphoric samples (e.g., Marx et al., 1992; Goddard et al., 1996; Watkins and Baracaia, 2002).

The original version of the MEPS consists of 10 vignettes that first present a problem situation and then describes a successful resolution to the problem situation (Platt & Spivack, 1975a). The task for the participant is to describe the actions needed to move from the problem to its successful resolution. Problems revolve around social themes such as experiencing conflict with friends, getting along with one’s boss, successfully stealing a diamond. The following is an example of a MEPS problem:

“You notice that your friends seem to be avoiding you. You want to have friends and to be liked. The story ends when

your friends like you again. You begin where you first notice your friends avoiding you.”

Platt and Spivack (1975b) showed that it is not necessary to administer all 10 vignettes. In the studies of this thesis, we used four vignettes that covered the following areas: problem with a boss (for clinically depressed group)/teacher (for dysphoric student group), friends avoiding you, moving to a new neighborhood, and dispute with a partner (for clinically depressed group)/parents (for dysphoric student group) (see Appendix 6). These themes have been used in previous work by Goddard et al. (1996, 2001). An example problem was presented before beginning the actual experiment to make sure that participants understood the instructions completely. Following each MEPS task, the participants were asked to describe any memories that were retrieved whilst trying to solve each social problem.

Responses were marked on the following three criteria: (1) relevant means (that is, the number of relevant individual steps used to solve the problem [Platt & Spivack, 1975]) ;(2) effectiveness of the solution; (3) the number and type of AMs retrieved spontaneously during SPS. The relevant means measure refers to the number of relevant individual steps used to solve the problem. The effectiveness measure is marked on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not at all effective) to 7 (very effective) for each problem. Scores are summed across the four problems to give each respondent a total effectiveness score and a total means score. Finally two raters categorized the memories spontaneously reported during SPS in terms of their level of specificity (e.g., specific, extended, categoric or solutions generated according to general knowledge).

Previous research has demonstrated good inter-rater reliability (.84 for relevant means and .87 for effectiveness) for the two solution measures on the MEPS (Goddard et al., 1996).