Schematic processing and self-reference in clinical depression.

Differences in self-schema content among 16 clinical depressives, 16 nondepressed psychiatric control patients, and 16 normal nondepressives (women between the ages of 18 and 65) were investigated by having subjects make structural (Small letters?), semantic (Means same as a given word?), and self-referent (Describes you?) ratings on depressedand nondepressed-content personal adjectives. These ratings were then followed immediately by an incidental recall period in which subjects recalled as many of the adjectives as possible. In accord with predictions generated from a self-as-schema model, adjective recall was greater overall for the self-referent rating task, relative to the structural and semantic tasks. Furthermore, consistent with the content-specificity component of this self-schema model, both normal and nondepressed psychiatric controls displayed superior recall only for self-referenced, nondepressed-content adjectives. Also consistent with the content-specificity component of this model, clinical depressives displayed significantly enhanced recall only for depressed-content adjectives rated under the self-referent task. In combination with rating time findings, these results offer empirical support for Beck's proposal that an efficient negative self-schema exists, specific to the disorder of depression.