Past and future events specificity in bipolar disorders

Previous research has shown that the individuals suffering from emotional disorders have
specificity of autobiographical memory (AM) deficits. This difficulty to remember specific
personal past events seems related to difficulty to project specific oneself into the future
(D’Argembeau, Raffard & Van der Linden, 2008). The aim of this study was investigated
these impairments in population with bipolar disorders (BD). Participants (19 patients with
bipolar disorders and 17 healthy subjects) completed validated French versions (Neumann &
Philippot, 2006) of the AMT Williams & Broadbent (1986). Participants were instructed to
generate specific past and future memories in response to cues words. For past events, the
analyses revealed a significant group by memory interaction (F(2,68) = 4.0 ; p=.023) which
indicates that the patients with BD recollected less specific events and more overgeneral
events than controls. In the same way, for the future events task, a significant group by
memory interaction emerged (F(2,68) = 7.85 ; p<.001) which indicates that the patients with
BD were less specific and yielded more overgeneral memories than the control group.
Thereby the results are consistent with previous studies that have examined
autobiographical memory specificity in patients with BD (Scott et al., 2000; Mansell & Lam,
2004). However, to ours knowledges, the present study is the first to investigate specificity of
AM and the abilities to generate specific events for future in patients with bipolar disorders.