My Turning Point Tells the Story: A Longitudinal Examination of Greater Episodic Detail and Youth Depressive Symptoms

Abstract

Although research findings show that the personal memories of people who are depressed are characterized by sparse episodic detail, under some circumstances, the opposite pattern emerges. Specifically, a recent study (Salmon et al., 2021) has shown that for community youth, greater episodic detail in a highly self-relevant narrative (a life turning point) predicted increased depressive symptoms concurrently and one year later. In a new longitudinal study of young people (N = 320 at Time 1, M = 16.9 years; 81% female) followed up over six months, we aimed to replicate and extend this finding. In Study A, we compared the turning point with a narrative about a conflict event, to establish whether the detail in a turning point memory uniquely predicted depressive symptoms. Supporting the first hypothesis, at both time-points, greater episodic detail was concurrently positively associated with depressive symptoms for turning point narratives only. Contrary to our second hypothesis, greater detail did not predict increased depressive symptoms longitudinally. The reverse pattern was significant, however, in that greater initial depressive symptoms predicted greater detail uniquely in the turning point narrative six months later. In Study B, we determined that the concurrent association between episodic detail and depressive symptoms in turning points (but not conflict events) was exacerbated by linguistic markers of self-focus (greater I-talk and lower distancing language). These findings suggest that greater detail in a turning point narrative may uniquely signify risk of psychological distress when youth narrate the experience with heightened self-focus.