|
Every day, people are presented with endless amounts of information, and in an effort to help keep track and organize this information, people must be able to recognize, differentiate and store information. One way to do that is to organize information as it pertains to the self.〔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''(9), 677-688. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.35.9.677〕 The overall concept of self-reference suggests that people interpret incoming information in relation to themselves, using their self-concept as a background for new information.〔 Examples include being able to attribute personality traits to oneself or to identify recollected episodes as being personal memories of the past.〔Benoit, R. G., Gilbert, S. J., Volle, E., & Burgess, P. W. (2010). When I think about me and simulate you: Medial rostral prefrontal cortex and self-referential processes. ''Neuroimage, 50''(3), 1340-1349. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.091〕 The implications of self-referential processing are evident in many psychological phenomena. For example, the "cocktail party effect" notes that people attend to the sound of their names even during other conversation or more prominent, distracting noise. Also, people tend to evaluate things related to themselves more positively (This is thought to be an aspect of implicit self-esteem). For example, people tend to prefer their own initials over other letters.〔Heatherton, T. F., Macrae, C., & Kelley, W. M. (2004). What the social brain sciences can tell us about the self. ''Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13''(5), 190-193. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00305.x〕 The self-reference effect (SRE) has received the most attention through investigations into memory. The concepts of self-referential encoding and the SRE rely on the notion that relating information to the self during the process of encoding it in memory facilitates recall, hence the effect of self-reference on memory. In essence, researchers have investigated the potential mnemonic properties of self-reference.〔Klein, S. B., Loftus, J., & Burton, H. A. (1989). Two self-reference effects: The importance of distinguishing between self-descriptiveness judgments and autobiographical retrieval in self-referent encoding. ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56''(6), 853-865. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.56.6.853〕 Research includes investigations into self-schema, self-concept and self-awareness as providing the foundation for self-reference's role in memory. Multiple explanations for the self-reference effect in memory exist, leading to a debate about the underlying processes involved in the self-reference effect. In addition, through the exploration of the self-reference effect, other psychological concepts have been discovered or supported, including simulation theory and the group reference effect. After researchers developed a concrete understanding of the self-reference effect, many expanded their investigations to consider the self-reference effect in particular groups like those with autism spectrum disorders or those experiencing depression. ==Self-concept and self-schema== Self-knowledge can be categorized by structures in memory or schemata. A self-schema is a set of facts or beliefs that one has about themselves.〔Katz, A. N. (1987). Self-reference in the encoding of creative-relevant traits. ''Journal of Personality, 55''(1), 97-120. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1987.tb00430.x〕 For any given trait, an individual may or may not be "schematic"; that is, the individual may or may not not think about themselves as to where they stand on that trait. For example, people who think of themselves as very overweight or who identify themselves to a greater extent based on their body weight would be considered "schematic" on the attribute of body weight. Thus, many every day events, such as going out for a meal or discussing a friend's eating habits could induce thoughts about the self.〔Markus, H., Hamill, R., & Sentis, K. P. (1987). Thinking fat: Self-schemas for body weight and the processing of weight relevant information. ''Journal of Applied Social Psychology'', ''17''(1), 50-71. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1987.tb00292.x 〕 When people relate information to something that has to do with the self, it facilitates memory.〔Klein, S. B., Loftus, J., & Burton, H. A. (1989). Two self-reference effects: The importance of distinguishing between self-descriptiveness judgments and autobiographical retrieval in self-referent encoding. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 56(6), 853-865. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.56.6.8533〕 Self-descriptive adjectives that fit into one's self-schema are easier to remember than adjectives not viewed as related to the self. Thus, the self-schema is an aspect of oneself that is used as an encoding structure that brings upon memory of information consistent with one's self-schema.〔Mills, C. J. (1983). Sex-typing and self-schemata effects on memory and response latency. ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45''(1), 163-172. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.45.1.163〕 Memories that are elaborate and well encoded are usually the result of self-referent correlations during the process of remembering. During the process of encoding, trait representations are encoded in long term memory either directly or indirectly. When they are directly encoded, it is in terms of relating to the self, and when it is indirectly encoded it is done through spouts of episodic information instead of information about the self.〔 Self-schema is often used as somewhat of a database for encoding personal data.〔 The self-schema is also used by paying selective attention to outside information and internalizing that information more deeply in one’s memory depending on how much that information relates to their schema.〔 When self-schema is engaged, traits that go along with one's view of themselves are better remembered and recalled. These traits are also often recalled much better when processed with respect to the self. Similarly, items that are encoded with the self are based on one's self-schema.〔 Processing the information should balance out when recalled for individuals who have a self-schema that goes along with the information.〔 Self-schemas do not necessarily only involve individual traits. People self-categorize at different levels that range from more personal to more social. Self-schemas have three main categories which play a role: the personal self, the relational self, and the collective self. The personal self deals with individual level characteristics, the relational self deals with intimate relationship partners, and the collective self deals with group identities, relating to self-important social groups to which one belongs (e.g., one's family or university).〔Johnson, C., Gadon, O., Carlson, D., Southwick, S., Faith, M., & Chalfin, J. (2002). Self-reference and group membership: Evidence for a group-reference effect. ''European Journal of Social Psychology, 32''(2), 261-274. doi:10.1002/ejsp.83〕 Information that is related to any type of self-schema, including group-related knowledge structures facilitates memory. In order for the self to be an effective encoding mechanism, it must be a uniform, consistent, well-developed schema. It has been shown that identity exploration leads to the development of self-knowledge which facilitates self-judgments. Identity exploration led to shorter decision times, higher confidence ratings and more intrusions in memory tasks.〔Dunkel, C. S. (2005). Ego-identity and the Processing of Self-relevant Information . Self and Identity, 349-359〕 Previous researchers hypothesized that words compatible with a person’s self-schema are easily accessible in memory and are more likely than incompatible words to intrude on a schema-irrelevant memory task. In one experiment, when participants were asked to decide if certain adjectives were “like me” or “not like me,” they made the decisions faster when the words were compatible with their self-schema.〔 Strube, M., Berry, J. M., Lott, C., Fogelman, R., Steinhart, G., Moergen, S., & Davison, L. (1986). Self-schematic representation of the Type A and B behavior patterns. ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', ''51''(1), 170-180. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.1.170 〕However, despite the existence of the self-reference effect when considering schemata consistent adjectives, the connection between the self and memory can lead to a larger number of mistakes in recognition, commonly referred to as false alarms. Rogers et al. (1979) found that people are more likely to falsely recognize adjectives they had previously designated to be self-descriptive.〔 Expanding on this, Strube et al. (1986) found that false alarms occurred more for self-schema consistent content, presumably because the presence of such words in the schema makes them more accessible in memory.〔 In addition to investigating the self-reference effect in regards to schemata consistent information, Strube et al. discussed how counter schemata information relates to this framework. They noted that the pattern of making correct decisions more rapidly did not hold when considering words that countered a person’s self-schema, presumably because they were difficult to integrate into memory due to lack of a preexisting structure.〔 That is, they lacked the organizational structure of encoding because they did not fall into the “like me” category, and elaboration would not work because prior connections to the adjective did not exist. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Self-referential encoding」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|