78 Mood, Cognition, and Memory
Weingartner et al. (1977). As noted earlier, they found that
word associations produced in a particular mood (either
manic or normal) were especially reproducible in that mood,
a finding that can be taken as evidence for either mood de-
pendence or mood congruence.
This ambiguity in interpretation arises from an ambiguity
in the test instructions that were given to the patients.
Although it is clear from Weingartner et al.’s account that the
patients were asked to recall their prior associations, it is
unclear how the patients interpreted this request. One possi-
bility is that they understood recallto mean that they should
restrict their search to episodic memory—in effect, saying to
themselves: “What associations did I produce the last time I
sawship?”—in which case the results would seem to suggest
mood dependence. Alternatively, they may have taken recall
as a cue to search semantic memory—“What comes to mind
now when I think of street,regardless of what I said four days
ago?”—in which case the data may be more indicative of
mood congruence.
Seeking to avoid this ambiguity, the test of letter-association
retention was divided into two phases, each entailing a differ-
ent set of test instructions. The first phase involvedepisodic-
memory instructions:After reminding the patients that, near
the end of the last session, they had produced 20 words begin-
ning with a particular letter (e.g., E), the experimenter asked
them to freely recall aloud as many of these words as possible.
Patients were dissuaded from guessing and cautioned against
making intrusions. The second phase involved semantic-
memory instructions:Patients were presented with the other
letter to which they had previously responded in the immedi-
ately preceding session (e.g., S), and were asked to name aloud
20 words—any 20 words—beginning with that letter. Patients
were explicitly encouraged to state the first responses that came
to mind, and they were specifically told that they need not try to
remember their prior associations. To get the patients into the
proper frame of mind, the experimenter asked them to produce
20 associations to each of two brand-new letters before they re-
sponded to the critical semantic memory stimulus.
The reasoning behind these procedures was that if memory
is truly mood dependent, such that returning to the original
mood helps remind subjects of what they were thinking about
when last in that mood, then performance in the episodic task
should show an advantage of matched over mismatched
moods. In contrast, an analogous advantage in the semantic
task could be construed as evidence of mood congruence.
Disappointingly, neither task demonstrated mood depen-
dence. On average, the patients reproduced about 30% of
their prior associations, regardless of whether they intended
to do so (i.e., episodic vs. semantic memory instructions) and
regardless of whether they were tested under matched or
mismatched mood conditions. Thus, whereas Weingartner’s
original study showed an effect in the reproduction of associ-
ations that could be construed as either mood congruence or
mood dependence, the new study showed no effect at all.
Although this discrepancy defies easy explanation, it
is worth noting that whereas Eich et al. (1997) used letters
to prime the production of associative responses, Weingartner
et al. (1977) used common words, stimuli that patients with
clinical mood disturbance may interpret in different ways,
depending on their present affective state (see Henry,
Weingartner, & Murphy, 1971). It is possible that associa-
tions made to letters allow less room for state-specific inter-
pretive processes to operate, and this in turn may lessen the
likelihood of detecting either mood-congruent or mood-
dependent effects (see Nissen et al., 1988).
More encouraging were the results of the test of auto-
biographical-event recall. Inspection of the light bars in
Figure 3.4 reveals that performance was better when encod-
ing and retrieval moods matched than when they mismatched
(mean recall=33% vs. 23%), evidence of mood dependenceFigure 3.4 Autobiographical events recalled and inkblots recognized as a function of
encoding/retrieval moods (M=manic or hypomanic, D=depressed).Source:Eich,
Macaulay, and Lam, 1997.0% M/M M/D D/M D/D10%20%30%40%50%60%70%Event Recall Inkblot RecognitionEncoding/Retrieval MoodsMean Recall or Recognition