Definition of the week: Self-reference effect

(1997, cited in Myers 2006) explain that we are better at remembering information that we can relate to ourselves. For example, if we were asked how accurate the adjectives are that describe a certain person, we would most likely forget them; On the other hand, if we are asked to evaluate how we describe ourselves, we tend to remember the words quite well. This phenomenon is called the self-reference effect.

Several studies have been done on the subject:

Some have sought to see the . For example, by giving a group of subjects 4 tasks to force various types of encoding (self-referential, structural, semantic, and phonetic). Incidental recall of the words made it clear that the adjectives rated in the self-reference task were remembered much better. Other .

It has also been seen that yes. According to the authors of the study, this points to the importance of this cortex for the self-reference effect to occur and suggests that it is important for processing self-reference information and for the neural representation of oneself.

Finally, it could also be observed that the amount of cognitive resources exerted an influence on how much older adults benefited from self-reference. Self-referencing appears to improve memory in older adults, but the benefits are limited despite the socially and personally relevant nature of the task.

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Sources:

Myers, D. (2006), Psychology 7th edition. Panamericana Medical Editorial:Madrid