The Self-Reference Effect in Incidental Memory: Elaboration, Organization, Rehearsal and Self-Complexity

The study was designed mainly to examine the self-reference effect (SRE) in recall relative to recall of words presented in regard to an “other” reference in order to clarify whether the effect is due to organization [1] or also to elaboration. Further purposes were to study the effect in long-term hypermnesia, its dependence on rehearsal as manifested through thought-samplings, and its relation to a self-complexity measure. The design was multi-task, multi-condition and multi-trial. The four tasks (each with 16 words, administered randomly) were: SR, reference to the typical freshman, semantic and structural. The five conditions differed in the expectedness of recall, the number of recalls in the first and second sessions (a week apart), the introduction of thought samplings or relaxation periods prior to recall, recurrence of fourteen recalls during the week's interval. The subjects were forty men and forty women undergraduates, assigned randomly to the conditions. The major findings were that the SR task is superior in recall and clustering to all the others, including the typical freshman, across all conditions and trials; repeated recalls did not produce hypermnesia; thoughts about the self and the words did not promote recall whereas those about the situation did; and a measure of self-complexity was correlated positively with recall in the SR tasks. It is suggested that the SR effect depends on elaboration manifested initially in clustering and later in processes that serve to integrate relevant material into stable personality structures.