Self-Defining Memories Questionnaire

Projecting the self into the future in individuals with schizophrenia: a preliminary cross-sectional study

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study on the ability to make explicit connections between the future and the self in schizophrenia. Our findings thus extend previous studies that have explored self-defining memories in schizophrenia (Berna et al, 2011a(Berna et al, , 2011bRaffard et al, 2009) by showing that difficulties in pondering on the personal meaning of life events are not only present when patients remember the past but also when they contemplate possible futures. Although autobiographical reasoning, that is, the cognitive process of gaining insight from different events, has been largely studied in clinical and non-clinical samples, the tendency for individuals to derive integrative meaning when they think about future significant events has been largely understudied up to date.…”

“…Numerous studies have found that patients with schizophrenia have cognitive deficits (Reichenberg & Harvey, 2007), verbal output impairments (Henry & Crawford, 2005) and higher level of emotional distress that could contribute to difficulty in generating narratives (Berna et al, 2011a(Berna et al, , 2011bWilliams, Teasdale, Segal, & Soulsby, 2000). Consequently, in this study, a global cognitive screening tool, fluency tasks, and an emotional distress scale were administered to investigate whether potential deficits in SDFPs characteristics are related to these variables.…”

“…Previous studies on SDMs have highlighted several key dimensions along which individuals' SDMs may vary: memory structure (which reflects the level of memory specificity; Blagov & Singer, 2004), integrative meaning (i.e., consisting of ascribing meaning to memories by extracting lessons about the self; Blagov & Singer, 2004), affective responses to memory retrieval (Blagov & Singer, 2004), and thematic content (e.g., life-threatening event, leisure, relationship or achievement events). So far, only a few studies have investigated SDMs in schizophrenia (Berna et al, 2011a(Berna et al, , 2011bRaffard et al, 2009;Raffard, D'Argembeau, Lardi, et al, 2010). Overall, these studies showed that participants with schizophrenia recalled as many specific SDMs as healthy controls (Raffard et al, 2009;Raffard, D'Argembeau, Lardi, et al, 2010).…”

“…More precisely, patients recalled fewer memories about past achievements and more memories regarding hospitalisation and stigmatisation of illness, reflecting chaotic life trajectories due to the consequences of the illness (Berna et al, 2011a;Raffard, D'Argembeau, Lardi, et al, 2010). Perhaps most importantly, schizophrenia patients also displayed impairments in organising and giving meaning to their past experiences (Berna et al, 2011a(Berna et al, , 2011bRaffard et al, 2009;Raffard, D'Argembeau, Lardi, et al, 2010). Autobiographical reasoning has been defined as the tendency to draw meaning of an event and entails either an explicit or an implicit relationship between an event and enduring dimensions of the self.…”

Autobiographical memory distributions for negative self-images: Memories are organised around negative as well as positive aspects of identity

“…The changes in autobiographical memory function associated with different psychopathological disorders have been the focus of much research (Bergouignan et al, 2008;Jobson, 2011;Raes et al, 2006;Werner-Seidler & Moulds, 2011Williams et al, 2007), and recent studies have also begun to investigate the ways in which such changes in autobiographical memory function might impact on identity. Investigations of selfdefining memories in clinical groups have shown, for example, that schizophrenic patients' selfdefining memories were rated as more traumatic than controls' (Berna et al, 2011), and that there was a weaker thematic association between selfimages and associated memories in schizophrenic patients compared to controls (Bennouna-Greene et al, 2012). A recent study by Jorgensen et al (2012) found that the memories "most central to the life story" of patients with borderline personality disorder tended to be more negative and less coherent than those of controls.…”