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

“Experiment 2 included a different set of 19 participants (13 women, mean age = 20.9 years).”

“This high fluency and elaboration increases the amount and strength of associative pathways linked to the information (Symons and Johnson 1997; Yoon, Choi, and Song 2011).”

“For instance, both organization and distinctiveness contribute to the ‘self-reference effect’, the mnemonic superiority that results from relating items to the self (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“recall that is superior to what? A recent meta-analysis concluded that the SRE is most robust when compared to semantic processing control tasks, and somewhat less robust when an other-referential (OR) control task is used (Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“Returning to self-referential processing more specifically, this capacity appears to confer a special memory advantage, a phenomenon known as the “self-reference effect” (SRE; Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“Also, research on self-based referencing structures suggests that such memories may be accurate and increase in accuracy over time (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“In the context of memory research, processing information in relation to the self, relative to meaningbased semantic processing, enhances subsequent memory performance – called the self-reference effect in memory (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“In an early meta-analysis of 129 studies of memory, Symons and Johnson (1997) reported that self-reference strategies that involved actively encoding information related to the self results in superior memory relative to other-referent and semantic encoding strategies.”

“Moreover, the self-concept is among the most complex and multi-faceted concepts that people represent (Rafaeli-Mor & Steinberg, 2002; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“In their meta-analysis, Symons and Johnson (1997) proposed that selfreferential processing is most effective when employed for the organization and elaboration of stimuli usually encoded through self-referent appraisals.”

“Importantly, however, when there is an existing social connection between self and others the magnitude of the self-memory advantage is typically attenuated (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“1 Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 2 Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 3 Graduate Program in Areas of Basic and Applied Biology, University of Oporto, Oporto, Portugal Edited by: Pengmin Qin, University of Ottaw…”

“If so, the activation of any particular self-referent trace may lead to rapid activation of relevant other traces (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“These similarities in the pattern of results pertaining to age and race of faces suggest general in-group/out-group processing differences at encoding and/or retrieval of faces (Ebner, He, Fichtenholtz, McCarthy, & Johnson, 2010; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…and such information is subsequently more likely to be successfully retrieved from memory (e.g., Bargh, 1982; Conway & Dewhurst, 1995a; Klein & Loftus, 1988; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997; Turk, Cunningham, & Macrae, 2008; Turk, van Bussel, Waiter, & Macrae, 2011).”

“Access to this information is privileged, with subjects showing twice as efficient recall of self-related items than non-self-related items in a phenomenon labeled the self reference effect (Symons and Johnson, 1997), which may also be relevant to our findings.”

“Theta oscillations related to self-referential processing It has been well documented that the self is a well-developed and most often-used construct that promotes elaboration and organization of information during memory encoding (Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com 1977; Maki and McCaul, 1985; Symons and Johnson, 1997) extends to objects that were only incidentally associated with self.”

“Create opportunities for self-reference Self-reference, when students actively relate class content to their own experiences and perspectives, increases concept elaboration, memory organization, and knowledge retention [54].”

“The idea that I will use to argue that the difference in cognitive ownership between Inga’s and Otto’s belief has consequences for the functional role of the information, is the finding that information that is explicitly processed with reference to self enjoys a memory advantage over information encoded in relation t…”

“Given the robust self-reference effect for item recognition (Symons & Johnson, 1997), it seems plausible that processing information in relation to the self might also improve source memory accuracy.”

“…is not limited to the perceptual domain, as memory for task materials is also greater for items related to the self (Van den Bos, Cunningham, Conway, & Turk, 2010; Cunningham, Turk, Macdonald, & Macrae, 2008; Turk, Cunningham, & Macrae, 2008; Symons & Johnson, 1997; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977).”

“In a recent meta-analysis of studies of the self-reference effect in memory, Symons and Johnson (1997) concluded that the self is important not only because of its elaborative and organizational properties but also because it links encoding and test conditions, a phenomenon that facilitates access…”

“In the study of self as a memory system, for example, Greenwald and Banaji (1989) demonstrated that the powerful mnemonic effects associated with self reference are best understood in terms of ordinary memory processes (for a meta-analysis, see Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“These findings suggest that reactivation may enhance true memories by elaborating upon memory details related to oneself (87), but increase false memories via binding of novel information.”

“The question motivating our inquiry is quite straightforward, what happens in the brain when people acquire arbitrary psychological ownership over a set of objects?”

“This pattern is exemplified by the “self-reference effect” (SRE) on memory (Rogers et al., 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997)—the tendency for personality traits encoded with reference to the self (e.g., “Am I intelligent/reliable/friendly?”) to be better remembered than traits encoded about another…”

“Furthermore, research on the self-reference effect (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997) has shown that information encoded in relation to the self is better recalled than other types of semantic information, and that self-referential encoding engages different brain regions to…”

“Abundant work has shown that processing information in relation to the self leads to better item memory than does processing information relative to “others” (e.g., Albert Einstein, the Danish Queen; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…including studies in which people are instructed to remember stimuli, like personality traits, nouns, and definitions (for a review see Symons & Johnson, 1997), in people who suffer from mild depression as well as in healthy individuals (Derry & Kuiper, 1981), and across age groups,…”

“…quickly and with higher accuracy than otherrelated information, suggesting that self-referential memory is more elaborated, processed more deeply and retrieved with more ease than other-referential knowledge (Craik et al., 1999; Kelley et al., 2002; Rogers et al., 1977; Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“Many studies have documented that selfreferenced processing enhances word memory relative to other semantic forms of word processing (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“For example, memory is better for information that relates to ourselves than others [1,2,3].”

“…for the SRE have focused on the self-memory system, the extensive body of self-knowledge stored in long-term memory that has the capacity to scaffold incoming information to which it is relevant (Conway & Dewhurst, 1995; Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986; Klein & Loftus, 1988; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…or enjoy these activities (“self”) or how much another person does (“Obama”); the choice of U.S. President Barack Obama was guided by earlier research (Symons & Johnson, 1997; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), which has generally compared self-referential processing to inferences about the current…”

“was performed using RMediation (Tofighi and MacKinnon 2011). RMediation is a bootstrapping technique that computes a confidence interval for mediated effects rather than using stepwise regression à la Baron and Kenny (1986). RMediation allows for the direct testing of the mediation chain of interest (in the current ex…”

“…Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004), attention (Shapiro, Caldwell, & Sorensen, 1997) and memory (Conway, 2005; Heatherton, Macrae, & Kelley, 2004; Symons & Johnson, 1997), recent research has highlighted the beneficial effects of self-referential processing on perceptual matching (Sui &…”

“Also, encoding information by relating it to oneself (i.e., self-reference) has been shown to produce stronger, more resilient memories (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Numerous studies in young adults have demonstrated that the processing of information in relation to the self enhances memory relative to semantic processing or processing in relation to another person—what has been termed the “self-reference effect” (SRE; for review, see Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“This is because a long-standing literature suggests that processing information under-self-referenced conditions promotes organization, elaboration,and encoding of information that is generally superior to comparative other referenced conditions (Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“This effect is significantly smaller when the other person is an intimate rather than a stranger or acquaintance (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“As social psychologists have shown through research on the self-reference effect, people are particularly attuned to selfrelevant information ( Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“Senkfor, Van Petten, and Kutas 415 judging self-referentiality (Bower & Gilligan, 1979), suggesting that this effect may have more to do with general depth of processing or elaboration than self-reference per se ( Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“Prior research has been criticized for failing to control for word valence effects and significant person effects (Symons and Johnson 1997).”

“Altogether our study shows that the magnitude of self vs. other difference in information processing is largely modulated by the relevance and/or familiarity factors (for a review see Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“According to previous research (Symons and Johnson 1997; Mashek et al. 2003), the closer the other person is to self, the better the recognition memory for items that were presented with the name of this other person in the preceding encoding task.”

“We suggest that left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activation is in part responsible for the well documented mnemonic superiority arising from relating material to the self : the ‘self-referential ’ memory effect (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“The self-concept refers to a very refined knowledge structure about the person we know best (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“The self-reference effect has consistently been demonstrated to improve memory performance, as self-referential processing encourages greater elaboration that taps into well-established schemas (Klein & Nelson, 2014; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“An emotional focus also involves talking about one’s reactions to events, and relating events to oneself is a particularly deep form of processing (the self-reference effect; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“The self-reference method, for instance, adapts the importance of the strategy, in terms of information processing (Rogers et al., 1977; Sottilare et al., 2016; Symons & Johnson, 1997; Tam & Ho, 2006), to the personalisation literature.”

“One such example is the biasing of memories for information related to the individual, which results in superior recall for items encoded in relation to or of importance to the ‘self’ (i.e. the self-referential effect, Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“…early self-referential memory effects through ownership A robust feature of adult cognition is the ‘self-reference effect’ (SRE) in memory (Rogers, Kuiper & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997), the memory advantage for information encoded in relation to the self overmaterial encoded about others.”

“self-reference effect, which was in line with previous studies [15, 19 ] . Although there was no significant effect”

“Self-reference effect refers to the phenomenon that explains why, in healthy individuals, retrieval of information is more accurate when the information is encoded about the self, rather than related to other people (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Response in the mPFC is also correlated with the “self-reference effect” (better memory for words encoded with reference to oneself than others; Symons & Johnson, 1997): that is, greater mPFC response at encoding predicts better subsequent memory for words encoded with respect to oneself (Mitchell,…”

“…& Duncan, 1997); project our personal beliefs, traits, and experiences onto others during attribution (Tamir & Mitchell, 2013; Epley, Keysar, Van Boven, & Gilovich, 2004); and are more likely to remember information if it is personally relevant (Symons & Johnson, 1997; Bower & Gilligan, 1979).”

“It is well established that self-related information is encoded faster and more strongly than other types of information (Klein, 2012; Kuiper & Rogers, 1979; Rogers et al., 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Finally, several studies have demonstrated a mnemonic advantage for information processed in a selfreferential manner (see Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“r 2522 r compared to both familiar and unfamiliar others in the PLC group [Mu and Han, 2010; Symons and Johnson, 1997].”

“This speculation is supported by the well established “self-reference effect” leading to an eased retrieval of self-relevant information (Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”