The self-reference effect in memory: A meta-analysis

“For example, in a meta-analysis on the effects of self-reference on memory (Symons & Johnson, 1997), studies using a single-group pretest–posttest design produced a mean effect size that was very close to the estimate from studies that included a control group.”

“The message that has emerged from subsequent studies that have investigated the relationship between self and memory function is a consistent one—self-reference permits superior memory relative to other semantic encoding tasks (see Symons & Johnson , 1997).”

“Such self-referential thinking may also increase the likelihood of central processing [23].”

“…in ‘‘deep’’ levels of semantic processing which would be expected for processing material related to the self (the left lateral inferior frontal cortex; Symons & Johnson, 1997; Wagner et al., 1998), egocentric memory (ventral striatum; White, 1997) and assessments of the motivational content of…”

“…Jorgensen, Johnson, Kolodzie0, and Scheer (1996), Knight, Fabes and Higgins (1996), Newcomb and Bagwell (1995), Polich, Pollock, and Bloom (1994), Symons and Johnson (1997), Van Ijzendorn (1995), Voyer, Voyer and Bryden (1995), Wood (1987), and Wood, Lundgren, Ouellette, Busceme and Blackstone…”

“…have long debated the nature of the mental representations that separate the self from others (Goldman, 1992; Stich & Nichols, 1992), and addressing this question has generated an extensive experimental literature (Symons & Johnson, 1997; Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977).”

“These findings are noteworthy as the additional recruitment of these frontal regions, particularly MPFC, may explain the general memory enhancement that is afforded to materials that trigger self-referential mental activity (Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“To explain the self-reference effect, for example, researchers have suggested that the self is " a well-developed and often-used construct in memory that promotes both elaboration and organization of encoded information " (Symons & Johnson, 1997, p. 372).”

“For example, it is possible that evaluating your own friendliness recruits highly accessible memory representations that are more structured and complex than those used to evaluate the friendliness of a work colleague (Dweck et al., 2003; Higgins and Bargh, 1987; Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“Subsequent research also has confirmed that events with high personal involvement or self-relevance, concepts closely tied to the idea of “consequentiality” described by Brown and Kulik [46], are more likely to be remembered than events with less personal relevance [323,383].”

“Typically, selfdescriptive traits are better remembered than traits descriptive of others (the self-reference effect; Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“The self-reference effect refers to the finding that people tend to remember words when processed in relation to themselves better than words processed more generally [see Symons and Johnson (1997) for a meta-analysis].”

“Numerous studies have established the reliability and validity of this phenomenon, labeled the “self-reference effect” (12).”

“People’s memory for what is associated with the self is considerably better than people’s memory for what is dissociated with the self (Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“Typically developing adults show a robust SRE when self-referential information processing is compared to information processing in relation to other people or to semantic manipulations[ 26 ].”

“For example, in a meta-analysis of 126 articles and book chapters on just the memory aspect of the effect, Symons and Johnson (1997) reported a consistent overall better memory for words studied in relation to self than for words studied in relation to other persons.”

“Additionally, only personal closeness, not familiarity, influenced the effect sizes (Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“The SRE in memory has been replicated many times (see Symons & Johnson, 1997, for a full review).”

“However, because most of the past research on self-reference has focused on its mnemonic effects ( Symons & Johnson, 1997 ), we used two measures of learning: retention—in which we assessed memory for the basic factual information that was presented—and problem-solving transfer—in which we asked students to solve new…”

“In addition, simply referencing the self when learning new material can lead to learning gains (e.g., Barney, 2007; for a review see Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Moreover, Symons and Johnson’s (1997) metaanalysis of 65 studies found that the self-referential advantage was twice as large when the other was close and familiar, as opposed to distant and unfamiliar (ds = .”

“Furthermore, memory research indicates that self-referenced information is recalled better than almost any other kind of knowledge (Hartlep and Forsyth, 2000; Symons and Johnson, 1997) – “If I practise cognitive therapy techniques on myself, I tend to recall them better”.”

“From the source monitoring perspective often applied to SRE findings, it could be postulated that representations of owned items are enriched by extant selfknowledge (see Klein & Loftus, 1988; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…1988) and that subsequent memory for self-referential judgments is better than for judgments about another person, especially if that person is not personally well known to the target, for example, a famous public figure or remote acquaintance (Bower and Gilligan 1979; Symons and Johnson 1997).”

“These areas have been previously implicated in “deep” levels of semantic processing (left lateral inferior frontal cortex) (116, 117), “egocentric memory” (ventral striatum) (118), and assessing the motivational content of stimuli (anterior cingulate) (119).”

“Later studies provided strong evidence that the same types of processes (i.e., elaboration, organization) are engaged for self-perception and other-perception but in a more intense manner for the self and emotionally close others (e.g., Klein and Kihlstrom, 1986; Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“Although the interconnection of the self and memory systems is behaviorally well established [Rogers et al., 1977; Symons and Johnson, 1997] and theoretically described [Conway, 2005; Haslam et al., 2010; Klein, 2010], at present, little is known about their interconnections at the neural level.”

“Self-referential processing involves deeper, more elaborative cognition [16] and may enhance persuasion [17].”

“There are a considerable number of studies on the effect of self-association in social psychology that have shown that there is enhanced importance assigned to self-associated objects (1), increased preference (2, 3), and stronger memory (4, 5).”

“Finally, comics often rely on the use of characters and situation models, which provide the basis for emotional attachment and self-reference, which can also facilitate the formation of new memories [Symons and Johnson, 1997].”

“One of the most important ways to identify one’s own person is to recognize one’s face and distinguish it from other persons’ faces.”

“Heatherton, Banfield, & Kelley, 2004; Kelley et al., 2002; Craik et al., 1999; see meta-analysis by Northoff et al., 2006), a type of processing that enhances the effectiveness of encoding (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; see Symons & Johnson, 1997 for a review).”

“…a set of trait adjectives applied to one of several referents (i.e., self, best friend and the UK prime minister, see Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), thereby creating a task context that varied the applicability of self-reflection (Kelley et al., 2002; Rogers et al., 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“We made this prediction on the basis of Klein and colleagues’ finding that tasks equated for the amount of organization that they encourage typically yield comparable recall performance (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986; Klein & Loftus 1988, 1990; for a review, see Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“self-referentially. This ‘self-reference effect’ [ 19 ] has typically been observed as better memory for stimuli that participants initially”

“Furthermore, research on self-representing information processing (see [65] for a review) suggests that a self-representing effect exists.”

“Self-referent encoding has been shown to enhance recall of offered information in several studies (Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“From this research it has been concluded that self-structure in memory is highly elaborated and organised, invokes multiple associations, is continually and incidentally updated, well learned and often used [33,48,63].”

“Typically, individuals show better subsequent memory for items encoded with regard to the self compared to other encoding conditions (Hull, Van Treuren, Ashford, Propsom, & Andrus, 1988; Klein, 2012; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“The self-referential memory effect refers to the fact that items encoded in relation to the self are typically very well-recalled (for meta-analysis, see Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“However, as subsequent experimental procedures (Klein & Loftus, 1988) and metaanalytic review (Symons & Johnson, 1997) have shown, two processes emerged as the most likely contenders—the elaborative processing hypothesis and the organizational processing hypothesis.”

“…be related to the degree of intimacy of the subject in the 3rd person instructions (e.g., Bower & Gilligan, 1979), although a meta-analysis found an overall significant effect of self-reference across 17 studies that used a highly intimate 3rd person (e.g., one's mother; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Third, Symons and Johnson (1997) coded the other-referent in all 65 of the relevant self-reference studies in their meta-analysis for degree of familiarity and degree of intimacy.”

“This is called the self-reference effect and has consistently been shown to improve memory and enhance learning (Rogers, Kuiper, and Kirker 1977; Symons and Johnson 1997).”

“…2003; Frith and Frith, 1999; D’Argembeau et al., 2005; Fossati et al., 2004; Gusnard et al., 2001; Kelley et al., 2002), episodic memory (Addis et al., 2004; Cabeza et al., 2004; Gilboa, 2004; Rogers et al., 1977; Symons and Johnson, 1997) and social functioning (Eisenberger and Lieberman, 2004).”

“This assumption was based, in part, on the finding that definition generation successfully had been used as a control task in many self-reference effect studies (for an extensive review of work on self-referent recall, see Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“I thank Anne Krendl for helpful discussions and for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.”

“Because self-relevant processing is deeper (e.g., Symons & Johnson, 1997), high private self-consciousness individuals could exhibit larger priming effects due to greater activation of the primed construct, rather than due to greater change in the self-concept.”

“), which is associated with particularly elaborate and detailed recall ( Symons and Johnson, 1997”

“…to their own personal experiences in brand selfies can generate higher levels of cognitive elaboration and mental simulation of brand consumption (Bower and Gilligan 1979; Escalas 2007), which has been linked to higher levels of brand engagement (Elder and Krishna 2012; Symons and Johnson 1997).”

“The personal focus involved in the media richness criteria is influential in the memory process because it causes humans to self-reference; people encode more attributes when they are engaged in self-referent processing than other types of processing (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“The finding of shared activations confirms our hypothesis of commonalities between SRP and EMR which was proposed based on theoretical considerations (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Gardiner, 2001; James, 1892), behavioral experiments (self reference effect; Rogers et al., 1977; Symons and Johnson, 1997), functiona…”

“Several studies (Fossati et al., 2004; Symons & Johnson, 1997) have showed that the self-reference effect involves processes both at the encoding and retrieval phase.”

“This variable has the advantage of controlling for group differences in overall rates of endorsement (Symons and Johnson 1997) and will henceforth be referred to as proportion self-referent recall.”