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

“Subsequent research confirmed the SRE with different tasks (e.g., imagery; Bower & Gilli-gan, 1979) and with different populations (e.g., children and adults; Pullyblank, Bisanz, Scott, & Champion, 1985; for a historical overview of the SRE, see Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…which participants are required to rate the extent to which personality characteristics are descriptive of both the self and a familiar other (e.g., celebrity, best friend, parent), items encoded in the context of the self are advantaged in memory (i.e., self > other; see Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Orienting tasks at encoding such as the pleasantness judgement and the man-made/natural judgement used in the current experiment are ubiquitously used in behavioural and neuroimaging literatures of episodic memory (for reviews, see Craik, 2002; Kim, 2011; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“As social psychological research on the self-reference effect indicates, students should better encode and remember new material to the extent that they can relate it to themselves (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Memory bias is especially strong for self- relevant information such as self- descriptive adjectives (Matt et al., 1992; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“These findings include enhanced memory for information relating to one’s self (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997) as well as other people close to them (Rogers et al., 1977), enhanced memory for information relating to survival needs (Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007), and…”

“Self-related information is associated with better encoding than other-related information [9, 23, 25–29], and self-knowledge is organized in a more abstract way than knowledge about other people, which relies to greater extent on episodic recollection [30, 31].”

“However, a number of follow-up studies found that SREs could be diminished by certain factors (reviewed in Symons and Johnson 1997 ).”

“Although the literature is mixed on whether self-referencing benefits memory relative to close others in Americans (Bower and Gilligan 1979; Symons and Johnson 1997), we suggest that this paradigm is limited in its usefulness for comparing Americans and East Asians on self and close otherreferencing.”

“In a meta-analysis of the selfreferential effect, Symons and Johnson (1997) suggested that self-referential encoding has the potential to provide self-relevant category labels that may enhance subsequent recall by facilitating the reinstatement of encoding conditions at retrieval.”

“SRE refers to the tendency that information is better remembered when it relates to oneself in comparison to information that involves less personal relevance (for a review, see Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“This SRE has been attributed to the operation of accessible and elaborative self-constructs that serve to enrich stimulus representations, hence memory performance (e.g., Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; Klein & Loftus, 1988; Mather, Shafir, & Johnson, 2003; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Owing to its robust representation in our memory system, self-concept also facilitates the encoding of new information; for example, trait adjectives rated in relation to the self are remembered better than traits encoded in other semantic contexts, the socalled self-reference effect (Rogers et al., 1977; Sui and Hump…”

“…is a strong characteristic of human cognition since it has been observed in various populations including healthy older people (Gutchess et al., 2007), with various materials and various paradigms at encoding and recognition and with different designs (for a review see Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“Numerous studies have established that self-referent encoding has an advantage over other types of encoding, with an average effect size of 0.50 (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…is processed with reference to the self (e.g., does this adjective describe you?) is remembered better than information processed in other ways (e.g., semantically [e.g., judging whether adjectives are commonly used in the English language]; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Due to the elaborative and organizational properties of the self-structure in memory (Symons and Johnson 1997 ) and consistent with Network Theory assumptions (Anderson 1976 ; Collins and Loftus 1975 ), personal nostalgia is expected to produce a more extensive associative network than historical nostalgia (Baker and…”

“People remember more information that they have been asked to process in a self-referent fashion than information that they have been asked to process in other semantic ways or in relation to another person (eg, Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977 ; Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“Self-referential processing takes place when an individual encodes information into memory in reference to the self (Rogers et al., 1977; Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“…memory to a greater degree than other successful encoding strategies—a phenomenon often referred to as the self-reference effect (for a review, see Symons & Johnson, 1997)—and initial findings suggest that individuals with compromised memory functioning demonstrate benefits from self-referential…”

“In the context of behavioral work, the current experiments were adequately powered to detect effects of sizes similar to those reported in two meta-analyses of self-reference memory benefit—(d = 0.63; Bentley, Greenaway, & Haslam, 2017) and (d = 0.65; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Encoding information in reference to the self also enhances learning because it leads to deeper, more elaborative processing (Klein, 2012; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Differences in the capacity to promote elaboration and organization between the Self and the Other are thought to underpin the SRE (Conway & Dewhurst, 1995; Higgins & Bargh, 1987; Keenan & Baillet, 1980; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“The two experiments also differed in several ways, including recall versus recognition memory measures, age ranges (7–13 years in Experiment 1, 7–10 years in Experiment 2), and number of participants (37 in Experiment 1, 14 in Experiment 2). In general, recall memory measures are known to be more sensitive than recogn…”

“Our results also extend previous neuroimaging investigations implicating the MPFC and PCC in the pathophysiology underlying SRP-related disturbances accompanying mood and anxiety disorders (9, 21, 22, 35, 36), with the present study demonstrating a less robust VMPFC response during SRP in PTSD participants relative to…”

“We assumed that if the nature of self-name processing was unique , then the self-preferential brain activity should be stable —its magnitude should not depend on the degree of intimacy between the participant and the person used for comparison—whereas if it was not, the opposite would be true (Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“…arousal, self-related information has demonstrated a consistent cognitive advantage in a large number of studies using various approaches (Brédart, Delchambre, & Laureys, 2006; Keenan, Freund, Hamilton, Ganis, & Pascual-Leone, 2000; Moray, 1959; Symons & Johnson, 1997; Tong & Nakayama, 1999).”

“Our findings mirror those from previous studies, indicating that self-related items are more likely to be correctly recalled than other-related items (Symons & Johnson , 1997).”

“Trait adjectives evoke semantic processing and episodic memories, especially when they are evaluated regarding reference to the self (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Psychological research suggests that self-referential memories are more memorable than other types of memories (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“It has been suggested that this increase in memory is due to the superior organizational and elaborative processes associated with encoding information in relation to the self (Rogers et al., 1977; Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“…to the participant, such as personality trait adjectives (e.g., ‘curious’, ‘stingy’) (Fujiwara et al., 2008; Gutchess et al., 2007; Rogers et al., 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997; Wentura et al., 2000) or autobiographical words (e.g., hometown, high school) (Gray et al., 2004; Yamawaki et al., in…”

“…when participants judged how well some words (e.g. trait adjectives) described themselves, they recalled or recognized the words well after incidental learning, compared to when using the words to judge others (Bower & Gilligan, 1979; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“The advantage of using this variable is that it controls for group differences in overall rates of endorsement (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“…for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, United States b VA Greater Los Angeles, Healthcare Center System, Los Angeles, CA, United States c Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States a r t i c l e i n f o ⁎ Corresponding author.”

“In addition, it has been suggested that memory is, at least in part, organized around the concept of the self (see for example Greenwald and Banaji, 1989; Symons and Johnson, 1997).”

“This argument has been made in reviews of self-enhancement effects in behavioral (Symons and Johnson 1997) and physiological data (Gillihan and Farah 2005).”

“Performance was enhanced in the self and common encoding contexts relative to the word context, consistent with selfreferencing literature (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“There is sizeable literature showing that self-reference benefits memory (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; for a meta-analysis, see Symons & Johnson, 1997), and we anticipated that this advantage would extend to the context of the production effect.”

“Another possibility (suggested to the authors by D. Reisberg, personal communication, January 13, 2004) is that emotionally charged stimuli may evoke familiar schemata, producing superior memory in much the same way as that produced by self-referential information (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Consistent with past research (see Symons & Johnson, 1997, for a review), better overall recall resulted from self-reference than from otherreference, F(1, 110) 136.50, p .0001.”

“…which refers to ‘‘self’’ was shown to depend on the degree of intimacy between the participant and the person used for comparison [for review see Symons and Johnson, 1997]. r 2073 r As far as the second aim of this study is concerned, we tested both cross-modal and modality-specific…”

“however, the groups were not matched for memory performance.Another process which presupposes metacognitive abilities is judging one’s own personality. Studies examining the mechanisms underlying self-descriptiveness judgments suggest 2 strategies people utilize when assessing their own personality [”

“E-mail address: cgrady@rotman-baycrest.on.ca (C.L. Grady). for later memory for this information (for a review see Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Well-established in adults (see Symons & Johnson, 1997 for meta-analysis), the SRE is typically measured by asking participants to process whether psychological trait words (friendly, clever, honest) are self-descriptive.”

“…information (Rozin & Royzman, 2001), research has also pointed to a self-prioritization effect, whereby human beings better attend to and remember information that relates to themselves as opposed to others (e.g., Moray, 1959; Sui & Rotshtein, 2019; Symons & Johnson, 1997; Turk et al., 2011).”

“…knowledge, only one meta-analysis has focused exclusively on this task; however, it examined memory differences between self, semantic-, and other-referential encoding strategies; did not examine the role of depressive symptoms; and was conducted approximately 25 years ago (Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“Perhaps adjectives, being processed differently than nouns and being more likely to be processed self-referentially (see for example Symons & Johnson, 1997) might require additional processing stages (e.g., self-reference) or, in general, they might require different processing stages than nouns in…”

“…memory, and motivation are biased by the degree to which information Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 November 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 1785 is related to or relevant for the self (Wood and Cowan, 1995; Symons and Johnson, 1997; Crocker and Park, 2003; Sui and Humphreys, 2015).”

“frequently used, and highly automatic knowledge construct ( Symons & Johnson, 1997 ).”

“In self-reference effect, studied items that are judged in relation to the self (eg, “does this word describe you?”) are remembered better than studied items judged in relation to another person (eg, “does this word describe person X?”) or are remembered better than items processed semantically (for review see Symons…”

“However, other studies have suggested that the SRE is fostered by something over and above traditional deep semantic encoding (Glisky & Marquine, 2009; Symons & Johnson, 1997).”

“The role of the self in facilitating memory in typical individuals is purported to be due to more effective encoding by use of a highly organised structure of self-concept (Symons and Johnson 1997).”

“…numerous studies have demonstrated robust benefits of self-referential strategies in healthy individuals (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; for a review, see Symons & Johnson, 1997), little research has focused on the mnemonic effect of self-referential processing in memory-impaired populations.”