Abstract
This paper tests Beck's theory that depressives uniformly have stable cognitive patterns for interpreting environmental information. Specifically, it is questioned whether depressives have schemata for interpreting (or distorting)information relative to their beliefs and self-attitudes. Thirteen depressives were compared with 13 nondepressives in the subjective organization of self-descriptive adjectives on multitrial free recall as well as in the clustering of words on final free recall. As expected, level of depression was negatively related to the subjective organization of adjectives but held no systematic relationship with the subjective organization of abstract nouns. Likewise, depression was associated with lower category cluster on final free recall. These results suggest that some depressives may lack stable cognitive schemata for interpreting personal information. Implications are discussed relative to Beck's cognitive model, to Seligman's learned helplessness reformulation, and to cognitive behavior therapy.
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Reference Notes
Davis, H.Self-reference as related to 17-hydroxycorticosteroid secretion in adult depression. Izaak Walton Killam Archives. University of Calgary, 1979.
Davis, H.Memory for personal adjectives in adult depression. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Calgary, 1979.
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Appreciation is expressed to W. R. Unruh and one anonymous reviewer for encouragement and assistance in the preparation of this research. Appreciation is also extended to R. Murphy for his assistance in the collating of data. The research was carried out as a pilot study for the author's doctoral dissertation. An Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship partially supported its execution, while the Calgary Family Service Bureau supported its preparation.
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Davis, H. The self-schema and subjective organization of personal information in depression. Cogn Ther Res 3, 415–425 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01184457
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01184457