Disentangling boredom from depression using the phenomenology and content of involuntary autobiographical memories.

ABSTRACT: Recurrent involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) are memories retrieved unintentionally and repetitively. We examined whether the phenomenology and content of recurrent IAMs could differentiate boredom and depression, both of which are characterized by affective dysregulation and spontaneous thought. Participants (n = 2484) described their most frequent IAM and rated its phenomenological properties (e.g., valence). Structural topic modeling, a method of unsupervised machine learning, identified coherent content within the described memories. Boredom proneness was positively correlated with depressive symptoms, and both boredom proneness and depressive symptoms were correlated with more negative recurrent IAMs. Boredom proneness predicted less vivid recurrent IAMs, whereas depressive

SUBMITTER: Yeung RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10808106 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature