Psychology Commons^™

Encoding Style Of Positive Autobiographical Memories: Relationship To Mood Repair, Memory Functioning, And Depression, Ena Begovic

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The recall of positive autobiographical memories is an effective strategy for improving negative mood among healthy persons, yet individuals with a history of depression often fail to derive emotional benefits. Depressed and depression-vulnerable individuals also exhibit deficits in their autobiographical memory characteristics. Scholars have implicated deficits during autobiographical memory retrieval as a cause of mood repair and memory impairments, however the role of memory encoding has largely been overlooked. The current study manipulated encoding style to examine subsequent effects on mood repair efficacy, memory characteristics, and memory accuracy. Fifty-five formerly depressed and 68 never-depressed participants were assigned to employ either …

Genetic Moderators Of Cognitive Decline In The Health And Retirement Study, Shannon K. Runge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current dissertation used a gene x environment (G x E) approach to examine the independent and interactive effects of specific genetic variants and participation in physical and cognitive/social activities (PA and CSA) on cognitive performance in 4,764 participants of the Health and Retirement Study. Using three-wave data, three sets of multi-level growth models were conducted to examine baseline, longitudinal, and interactive effects of genotype (i.e., ApoE, COMT, and BDNF) and CSA/PA on performance across five cognitive measures: immediate, delayed and total word recall, and serial 7s and backwards counting.

At baseline, the ApoE ε4 allele predicted …