Reduced specificity in autobiographical memory has been linked to Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Regardless of the valence of the cue word, it has been suggested that this propensity results from a lack of effortful creative retrieval. However, we argue that in MDD, general memories are more likely to be recalled directly, and that this is more likely for signals with a negative valence. An extensive sample of people with MDD took the autobiographical memory test and indicated whether or not the retrievals were generative or direct as a preliminary test of this. Positively valenced cues were more frequently retrieved directly than generatively, while negatively valenced cues were more frequently recovered directly than generatively.
