Abstract: To explore the autobiographical memory characteristics of patients with depressive disorder and the appliance of the autobiographical memory test (AMT) in this field.In the present study, 18 retrievaled literatures were used, including 566 patients with depressive disorder and 457 normal controls. The results of meta-ananlysis showed that, compared with the control group, the clinical group reported less special autobiographical memories and more overgeneral autobiographical memories, and recalled more slowly. The fuctional avoidance model, the reduced cognitive execution model and the rumination model were the dominant theories to explain such phenomenon in these literatures. The results of AMT were influenced by age, depression mood and the characteristics of AMT. The publication bias and sensitivity analysis showed that the present sdudy had good stability although it had publication bias. The AMT had some limitations in the researches on depressive disorder such as poor sensitivity, and some recommendations on AMT, program research design, and so on, were given for the future researches.

Key words: depressive disorder, autobiographical memory, the autobiographical memory test, meta-ananlysis