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

“Benefits have also been found for linking information to individuals who are close to the person, or that they know (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“In traditional paradigms, the SRE was widely scrutinized and demonstrated in conditions in which the self was linked with stimuli by presenting self-cues during the encoding phase (Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“Following the levels of processing approach (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Craik & Tulving, 1975), self-referential processing conditions are widely known to foster deeper levels of encoding and, thus, information recall is powerfully boosted (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“It was proposed that self-face recognition may have a cognitive advantage in terms of a wide range of motivational, affective, and mnemonic consequences [13].”

“This may suggest that some degree of self-reference (cf. Sui & Humphreys, 2015; Symons & Johnson, 1997) or personal relevance (cf. Nairne et al., 2017) may be necessary for effects of agency to emerge.”

“Moreover, one study showed that participants paid more attention to words that were personally relevant to them than to words that were irrelevant (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Second, prior work has demonstrated that self-bias is attenuated — or even eliminated — when intimate others comprise the target of comparison (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“(for review, see Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Relating information to the self yields memory enhancements because selfreference promotes greater elaboration and organization of information during encoding (see Symons & Johnson, 1997 for a meta-analysis).”

“Using a famous person as an “other” target is in line with previous work on the selfreferential memory effect, which used famous people such as George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, and Jimmy Carter (Kelley et al., 2002; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Selecting cues that tie into one's own idiosyncratic past experiences may be mnemonically beneficial, as in the self-reference effect (e.g., Symons & Johnson, 1997), because cues that tie into one's own personal experiences engender organized and elaborate processing.”

“The SRE is a cognitive psychological paradigm that is intended to capture the impact of self-referent processing on encoding and recall [45].”

“For example, episodic memory is enhanced for items or events that are encoded in relation to the self in comparison to another individual (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“It has consistently been found that words that the participant thinks about in relationship to the self are recalled better than words that are simply examined for meaning (Rogers et al., 1977; Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“This phenomenon is known as the SRE and results in deeper processing and better recall of self-referential information (Rogers et al., 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…findings in the literature is the self-advantage effect: the automaticity in the cognitive processing of self-representations (Maki & McCaul, 1985; Symons & Johnson, 1997) and self-perspectives (Back & Apperly, 2010; Bradford et al., 2015), characterised by faster and more accurate responses.”

“Then they were presented with an unexpected L2 to L1 translation test, as most L1 studies on the self-reference effect implemented a surprise test (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Alternatively, when participants provide truthful and deceptive responses in relation to themselves, this might invoke deeper encoding for truthful personal semantic information, benefitting from self-referencing (Rogers et al., 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…across the lifespan demonstrate an inclination to prioritize self-referential information, allocating it greater attention in comparison to information concerning others (Gillihan & Farah, 2005; Symons & Johnson, 1997), regardless of autistic traits (Dinulescu et al., 2021; Williams et al., 2018).”

“People tend to preferentially remember information about the self, over information about others and attempt to mentally reproduce information about past events that they do not remember in detail (Solhan et al., 2009; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“The self-reference theory suggests that information can be more efficiently organized and elaborated when it is referenced to the self (cf. Liu et al., 2023; Rogers et al., 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997), leading to better learning of this information.”

“Indeed, in previous research, self-referential encoding led to more accurate item memory (Rogers et al, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997) but less accurate destination memory (Gopie & MacLeod, 2009), and we expected to observe this same pattern in the direct-interaction conversations of Experiment 1.”

“Self-reference encompasses the capacity to refer to different events, political beliefs or moral perspectives, with respect to either the projected or actual self-location (for the self-reference effect in memory see [28–31]).”

“They are also more likely to remember and communicate self-relevant information than information unrelated to the self (Symons and Johnson, 1997; Naaman et al., 2010).”

“Things that are self-relevant attract more attention and are better remembered (Bellezza, 1984; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…instructions can help minimize the cognitive effort in learning task (Moreno & Mayer, 2000) because learners are naturally more efficient in processing material that is very familiar to oneself, which are often used, well organized, and well-elaborated in learner’s mind (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Memory for information encoded with reference to self has been shown to be better than memory for information encoded in relation to other people (e.g., Bower & Gilligan, 1979; for a review see Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“, an animal), or appear in capital letters [7].”

“The self-reference effect attributes mnemonic advantage of information in reference to the individual’s self (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…factors by encouraging additional internal processes such as semantic (Craik, 2021; Staresina et al., 2009; Wagner et al., 1998) or autobiographical elaboration (Addis, 2020; Symons & Johnson, 1997; Warren et al., 1985), and/or verbal labelling (Nelson et al., 1977; Paivio & Csapo, 1973).”

“A seminal study by Symons and Johnson (1997) showed that participants who were asked to memorize items describing personality traits performed better when asked to rate the extent to which these items described themselves during encoding than when asked to make the same judgments but in relation to…”

“…New Zealand moves away from zero-Covid strategy ” may have had at least some overlap with participants ’ lives at the respective time (i.e., dealing with the repercussions of Covid here in Germany; for evidence of self-reference e ff ects in memory, see Rogers et al., 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“This has been termed the self-reference effect – the tendency for people to remember information more accurately when that information has direct relevance to the self, compared with others (Klein et al., 1989; Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“…& Nowicka, 2010), enhance alertness and attention (Li et al., 2022), and improve individuals’ recognition performance about self-referential memory contents compared with memory contents about others (Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986; Symons & Johnson, 1997; Turk et al., 2011; Yin et al., 2019, 2021).”

“…acceptance scores, and the dotted line refers to individuals high in acceptance scores (+ 1 SD ) line with the self-referential encoding framework (Rogers et al., 1977), demonstrating that information encoded with reference to the self leaves more robust memory trace (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“The effect occurs across cognitive domains spanning from perception, attention, and memory to decision-making [ 11– 32 ].”

“Research testing the self-reference effect in memory indicated that self-referent encoding strategies yield superior memory relative to other-referent encoding strategies (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…self-reference and memory utilize methods that may only engage a narrative form of self-reference (Macrae et al., 2004; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997), leaving the relationship between the experiential mode of self-reference and memory processes open for investigation.”

“Further, the self-reference effect, or relating information to the self has been shown to increase the retention of the information (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“However, self-reference effects in memory (superior memory for information evaluated with reference to oneself, compared to information evaluated with reference to someone else) tend to become stronger over time (Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“Finally, similarity sometimes affects adults’ sociocognitive abilities, such as their information recall (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997) and empathetic skills (e.g., Eklund, Andersson-Stråberg, & Hansen, 2009; but see Batson, Lishner, Cook, & Sawyer, 2005, for…”

“…strategy used during the learning process to enable the organisation and elaboration of new information (Gest et al., 2008; Klein & Loftus, 1988; Symons & Johnson, 1997) e occurs naturally in learning, when individuals are presented with large amounts of information to interpret, organise and…”

“In terms of cognitive load, the larger pupil dilation for the own name compared to unfamiliar names is particularly remarkable: Categorizing the own name should require less effort and thus produce less load than other names, due to a cognitive advantage for the own name [Symons and Johnson 1997].”

“Self-referencing can influence memory performance, whereby information related to the self is often better remembered than information related to other referencing conditions (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“However, there is also evidence that indicates when memories are sought from the episodic systems of experiences of the self – the Self Referencing Effect – then these recollections, while not infallible, are potentially more accurately remembered (Symons, College, & Johnson, 1997).”

“Take, for example, the finding that memory is improved when it involves self-reference 43 9(2 ) /2021 (Symons and Johnson 1997).”

“Simply mentioning a personal interest might not be sufficient to trigger the personal-reference effect (for a review see Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“We identified a self-reference effect in accor - dance with previous research (Symons & Johnson, 1997) such that self-encoded words were recognised better than both friend and pet-encoded words.”

“This effect arises because self-related processing engages elaborative encoding mechanisms, including deeper semantic processing as self-knowledge is well organized and frequently accessed in memory (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Although these results re fl ect only ethnic minorities, it is reasonable to assume that due to the self-reference effect (cf. Symons & Johnson, 1997), employees who belong to one or more other minority groups are also more concerned about their organization ’ s diversity policies (i.e., a perceived…”

“This self-referential effect (SRE) in episodic memory is consistently observed in young adults and persists even when contrasted with encoding in relation to close others such as friends or relatives (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“When information is perceived as personally meaningful, it is not only prioritized cognitively (the “self-reference eect”; Symons and Johnson, 1997) but also endowed with a deeper, personalized value.”

“These observations prompt us to ask the following question: when different levels of chronic media multitaskers are exposed to a myriad of emotional information from several media (can be at different times or at the same time) specifically related to ‘selves’ do they show any bias toward positive or negative informat…”