Ownership and memory: the ‘Me’ is in Remembering, not in Knowing

Mirjam van den BosUniversity of Aberdeen

2nd September 2009

Self-reference effect

• Memory advantage for information that has been encoded with reference to the self

• How can it be explained:

• - self as superordinate schema (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977)

- ‘any well-differentiated person will do’ (Bower & Gilligan, 1979)

- level of processing effect (Ferguson, Rule, & Carlson, 1983)

- organization & elaboration (Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986; Klein & Loftus, 1988;

Symons & Johnson, 1997 )

Remembering and Knowing

• Conway and Dewhurst (1995)

‘self-relevant information is important and needs to be available for recollective experience’

‘self-schemas enable integration with episodic memory’

• Distinction between Remembering and Knowing (Tulving, 1985)

(Conway & Dewhurst, 1995)

• Participants judge adjectives (self, other, valence)

• Remember-Know paradigm

• Self-Reference Recollection Effect (SRRE) Conway, Dewhurst, Pearson, & Sapute (2001)

Activation of self-concept in a less explicit way

• Association between Self and owned objects (Belk, 1988; Beggan, 1991)

• Beggan (1992): owned objects more favourable

• Shopping paradigm (Cunningham, Turk, Macdonald, & Macrae, 2008)

• What does it tell us? What does it NOT tell us?

Current experiment

• Stimuli: 150 images:

- 50 self-owned targets

- 50 other-owned targets

- 50 distractors at test

• Single-factor (Ownership) within-subjects design

Test: 2-step RKG

• 1: ‘yes’ or ‘no’

• 2: Remember (specific memory, with details)

Know (strong feeling of familiarity)

Guess

Prediction:

ownership effect in recognition accompanied by recollective experience (similar to SRRE)

Results

Ownership: F(1,27) = 6.389, p = .018

0.5

0.55

0.6

0.65

0.7

0.75

0.8

ov

era

ll h

it r

ate

Ownership

Self

Other

(Results)

Ownership x Response Type F(1,27) = 11.422, p = .002

Remember: F(1,27) = 10.444, p = .003Know: F(1,27) = 2.444, p = .130

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

hit

ra

te

Remember Know

Response Type

Self

Other

Discussion

• How do the present data relate to Conway and Dewhurst’s SRRE?

• How about other studies that only examined ‘overall’ data?

(Discussion)

• Spontaneous elaboration

• Arousal?

• Ecological function?

Thank you

Beggan, J. K. (1991). Using what you own to get what you need: The role of possessions in satisfying control motivation. [Special Issue]. Journal of Social Behavior and

Personality, 6, 129-146.

Beggan, J. K. (1992). On the social nature of nonsocial perception: The mere ownership effect.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 229-237.

Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15, 139-168.

Bower, G. H., & Gilligan, S. G. (1979). Remembering information related to one's self. Journal of Research in Personality, 13, 420-432.

Conway, M. A.,& Dewhurst, S. A. (1995). The self and recollective experience. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9, 1-19.

Conway, M. A., Dewhurst, S. A., Pearson, N., & Sapute, A. (2001). The self and recollection reconsidered: How a ‘failure to replicate’ failed and why trace strength accounts of recollection are untenable. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 15, 673-686.

References

(references)

Cunningham, S. J., Turk, D. J., MacDonald, L. M., & Macrae, C. N. (2008). Yours or Mine? Ownership and memory. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 312–318.

Ferguson, T. J,, Rule, G. R., & Carlson, D. ( 1983 ). Memory for personally relevant information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 251-261.

Klein, S. B., & Kihlstrom, J. E (1986). Elaboration, organization, and the self-reference effect in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 115, 26-38.

Klein, S. B., & Loftus, J. (1988). The nature of self-referent encoding: The contribution of elaborative and organizational processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 5-11.

Rogers, T. B., Kuiper, N.A., & Kirker, W.S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 677-688.

Symons, C. S., & Johnson, B. T. (1997). The self-reference effect in memory: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 371–394.

Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology, 25, 1-12.

Raw dataMeans and Standard Deviations of Overall Recognition, Remember Hit Rate (HTR) and Know HTR, by Ownership Conditions.

XXXX

  Ownership

Self Other

Overall HTR X SD

.781

.209.746.192

Remember HTR X SD

.561

.221.479.235

Know HTR X SD

.178

.128.218.178

Guess HTR X SD

.042

.066.050.060

(Raw data)

Means and Standard Deviations of Remember, Know and Guess False-Alarm Rates.

X

  False-Alarm Rates

  Remember Know Guess

X SD

.009

.018.042.064

.026

.040