Crovitz technique: what is it and how is it used in mental health?

This useful resource is used to assess the quality of patients' memory capacity.

One of the methods that can be used to assess autobiographical memory, and therefore retrograde amnesia, is the Crovitz technique, based on the free association of words, used by used by pioneers of psychology such as Galton and Jung. In this article we will discuss Crovitz's method and the relationship between age and autobiographical memory.

What is the Crovitz technique and what does it consist of?

The Crovitz technique is a psychological test that is used to evaluate autobiographical memorymainly in people with some type of dementia. It was developed by Herbert F. Crovitz and Harold Schiffman in 1974; the authors were based on the free word association method, which had been created by Francis Galton and popularized by Carl Jung.

This simple test consists of presenting the test subject with a series of words. The person will have to relate a personal memory from any time in his or her life that he or she associates with the stimulus word. associated with the stimulus word. Although it is difficult to carry out quantitative assessments of the results, they can be useful for analyzing autobiographical memory in broad strokes.

The number and characteristics of the subject's memories are compared with those of his or her normative group in order to detect signs of cognitive impairment, or to rule them out. In this regard, it is important to bear in mind that the quality of memory varies with age. memory quality varies according to the age at which a particular memory was encoded; this will be discussed below. This will be discussed below.

Although many experts defend the consistency of this technique, several studies have warned about the weaknesses of the Crovitz technique. Beyond the difficulties related to the quantification of the results, it is known that certain types of words favor the retrieval of memories with emotional content or specific periods.

Developments of the Crovitz technique

Different authors have reconceptualized or refined the technique created by Crovitz and Schiffman.. For example, Robinson updated the method by specifying two instructions, "Think of an experience from your own life that this word reminds you of" and "Keep thinking until you remember a particular event associated with the word."

For his part, Karis carried out a procedure in which he instructed subjects to write down any memory that came to mind when reading the stimulus word, specifying that these could be very specific ("such as having broken a window on a particular day") or general ("such as washing the windows every Saturday morning").

Memory as a function of encoding age

People generally remember well events that have happened recently. The quality of memories declines very sharply as we move backward in the last year or so of life; memory for previous events worsens more slowly after this point.

Consequently, when plotting the recall curve as a function of the age of encoding we observe a sharp drop in the last months of life that eventually takes the form of an asymptote. However, certain factors exert obvious effects on the normal functioning of autobiographical memory.

Thus, the Crovitz technique and other similar methods can be useful in may be useful in assessing the presence of retrograde amnesia, which is defined as great difficulty in recalling eventswhich is defined as a great difficulty in remembering events that took place before a given brain lesion, such as those characteristic of Korsakoff's syndrome and dementias, especially Alzheimer's disease.

Another striking fact is that older people, especially those with signs of cognitive impairment, remember to a greater extent biographical events that occurred when they were between 10 and 30 years old, approximately, compared to those that occurred in later years. This period has been called the "peak of reminiscence"..

History of the word association method

Francis Galton, considered one of the pioneers of statistics (and a strong advocate of controversial eugenic ideas), developed in the late 19th century a psychological assessment technique consisting of presenting words to a subject, who then verbalized one or two ideas related to the terms given by the evaluator.

Although Galton did not use word association specifically to evaluate autobiographical memory, other authors adopted it for this and other purposes. Particularly famous is the application made by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung as a method of analysis of the unconscious, inspired by Freudian free association (or "fundamental rule").

Word association has been used by psychologists belonging to very different branches of our science. Thus, in addition to the clinical uses we have described, this method has also been used by psychologists belonging to very different branches of our science. has received some attention from market researchers as it can help assess consumer reactions to slogans, brand names, etc. as it can help to assess consumer reactions to slogans, brand names, etc.