Self-referential encoding

Every day, people are presented with endless amounts of information. In an effort to help keep track and organize this information, people must be able to recognize, differentiate and store information that pertains to the self. 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. 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. For example, people tend to prefer their own initials over other letters. 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 (encoding) facilitates memory (effect). In essence, researchers have investigated the potential mnemonic properties of self-reference.

Self-concept and Self-schema

Self-concept is categorized as stated structures of memory or schemata. The response that a person has to items or adjectives that they relate back to themselves is a process of self-disclosure or self- presentation . A self-schema is a set of facts or beliefs that one has about themselves. When people relate information to something that has to do with themself, it facilitates memory. Self-descriptive adjectives that go along with ones self-schema are easier to remember than adjectives not viewed as related to the self. Self-schema is an aspect of oneself that is used as an encoding structure that brings upon memory of information consistent with ones self-schema. 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 it is 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 [Dobson and Shaw]. When self-schema is engaged, traits that go along with ones view of themselves, those traits are better remembered and recalled. Superior recall should be most evidenced when the self is engaged in dealing with the traits. 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 ones self-schema. Processing the information should balance out when recalled for individuals who have a self-schema that goes along with the information. Participants in the study done by Katz used their self-concept to search for and retrieve information from their memory that was associated with the self.

By seeking out information related to their identity through identity exploration, people begin to develop their self-schema. Identity exploration includes searching for beliefs, making decisions, and investing in them. All of these components contribute to a person’s self-schema and the view they have of themselves. In fact, research has found that self-concept elaboration is positively associated with age, suggesting that as people age a developmental change occurs making one’s self-concept more elaborate and in turn aiding in the encoding and recall of self-relevant information.

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. 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.

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.

Type A and Type B Behavior Patterns

Through the development of the self-schema, people develop and maintain certain personality characteristics leading to a variety of behavior patterns. Research has been done on the differences between Type A and Type B behavior patterns, focusing on how people in each group respond to environmental information and their interpretation of the performance of others and themselves. It has been found that Type A behavior is characterized by competitive achievement striving, time urgency and hostility, whereas Type B is usually defined as an absence of Type A characteristics. When investigating causal attributions for hypothetical positive and negative outcomes, Strube et. al found that Type A individuals were more self-serving, in that they took greater responsibility for positive than negative effects. They argued that this could be a result of the fact that schema-consistent information is more easily remembered and the ease with which past successes and failures are recalled, determined by self-schema, would impact attributions. It is reasonable to believe that Type A’s might recall successes more easily and hence be more self-serving.

Theoretical background

Influential psychologists Craik and Lockhart laid the groundwork for research focused on self-referential encoding and memory. In 1972 they proposed their Depth of Processing framework which suggests that memory retention depends on how the stimulus material was encoded in memory. Their original research considered structural, phonemic, and semantic encoding tasks, and showed that semantic encoding is the best method to aid in recall. They asked participants to rate 40 descriptive adjectives on one of four tasks; Structural (Big font or small font?), Phonemic (Rhymes with xxx?), Semantic (Means same as xxx?), or Self-reference (Describes you?). This was then followed by an "incidental recall task". This is where participants are asked, without prior warning, to recall as many of the words they had seen as possible within a given time limit. Craik & Tulving’s original experiment showed that structural and phonemic tasks lead only to "shallow" encoding, while the semantic task lead to "deep" encoding and resulted in better recall.

caption.

Example tasks in Depth of Processing Hierarchy.

However, in 1977, it was shown that self-relevant or self-descriptive encoding leads to even better recall than semantic tasks. Experts suggest that the call on associative memory required by semantic tasks is what provides the advantage over structural or phonemic tasks, but is not enough to surpass the benefit provided by self-referential encoding. The fact that self-reference was shown to be a stronger memory encoding method than semantic tasks is what led to more significant interest in the field One early and significant experiment aimed to place self-reference on Craik and Lockhart's depth of processing hierarchy, and suggested that self-reference was a more beneficial encoding method than semantic tasks. In this experiment, participants filled out self-ratings on 84 adjectives. Months later, these participants were revisited and were randomly shown 42 of those words. They then had to select the group of 42 "revisited" words out of the total original list. The researchers argued that if the "self" was involved in memory retrieval, participants would incorrectly recognize words that were more self-descriptive In another experiment, subjects answered yes or no to cue questions about 40 adjective in 4 tasks (structural, phonemic, semantic and self-referential) and later had to recall the adjectives. This experiment validated the strength of self-reference as an encoding method, and indicated it developed a stronger memory trace than the semantic task.

In terms of organizing thoughts and self-schemas, personality theorists and researchers are now beginning to see the importance that a person organizes their psychological world. Theorists that favor the view of the self having a special role in aspects of schema have a more in depth and easier aspect of recall during self reference tasks. Theorists also promote the self-schema as being one of the sole inhibitors that allow for recall from deep memory. Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth (1979) had the goal of focusing on the process made by the active memory schemata. Sex-typed individuals recall trait adjectives that go along with their sex role more quickly than trait adjectives that are not. During the process of free recall, these individuals also showed more patterns for gender clustering than other sexually typed individuals. Also, when self-ratings were compared with ratings that were not self-related, recall was much greater for self-ratings as well as judged with more confidence. Judgments about the self yield better recall than nonsemantic encodings. Rogers, Kuiper and Kirkir conducted a study that found that judging trait adjectives for self-descriptiveness led to better recall than the following types of encoding when the material was the same; structural, phonemic, and semantic.

Types of self-referential encoding tasks

As research on self-referential encoding became more prolific, some psychologists took an opportunity to delineate specific self-referential encoding tasks. It is noted that descriptive tasks are those that require participants to determine if a stimulus word can be classified as "self-descriptive." Autobiographical tasks are those that require participants to use the stimulus word as a cue to recall an autobiographical memory. Results from experiments that differentiated between these types of self-referential encoding found that they both produced better recall than semantic tasks, and neither was more advantageous than the other. However, research does suggest that the two types of self-referential encoding do rely on different processes to facilitate memory. In most experiments discussed, these types of self- referential encoding were not differentiated.

The self-referent encoding task is an assessment that measures self-schema. The first application of a self-referential encoding task was done by Davis. Davis used the self-referent encoding task and found that his clients that were depressed were describing themselves with more negative adjectives. In a typical self-referent talk, adjectives are presented and classified as either self-descriptive or not. In the Dobson and Shaw study, adjectives about the self that were preselected were given to the participants and they decide whether or not the adjectives are self-descriptive. The basis for making certain judgments, decisions, inferences and decisions is a self-referent encoding task. If two items are classified as self-descriptive there is no reason one trait would not be equally as easy to retrieve as the other on a self-reference task.

The self-reference effect

The semantically processes items on the self-reference task would not be as easily recalled as self-descriptive items if a self-reference effect were to occur. While a significant amount of research supports the existence of the self-reference effect, the processes behind it are not well understood. However, multiple hypotheses have been introduced, and two main arguments have been developed: the elaborative processing hypothesis and the organizational processing hypothesis.

Elaboration

Elaboration refers to the encoding of a single word by forming connections between it and other material already stored in memory. By creating these connections between the stimulus word and other material already in memory, multiple routes for retrieval of the stimulus word are formed. Based on the depth of processing framework, memory retention increases as elaboration during encoding increases. The Elaborative Processing Hypothesis would suggest that any encoding task that leads to the development of the most trade elaboration or associations is the best for memory retention. Additional research on the depth of processing hierarchy research suggests that self-reference is the superior method of information encoding. The elaborative hypothesis would suggest this is because self-reference creates the most elaborate trace, due to the many links that can be made between the stimulus and information about the self already in memory.

Organization

The organizational processing hypothesis was proposed by Klein and Kihlstrom in 1986. This hypothesis suggests that encoding is best prompted by considering stimulus words in relation to one another. This thought process and relational thinking creates word to word associations. These inter-item associations are paths in memory that can be used during retrieval. Also, the category labels that define the relations between stimulus items can be used as item cues. Evidence of the organizational component of encoding is demonstrated through the clustering of words during recall. Word clustering during recall indicates that relational information was used to store the words in memory. Rogers, Kuiper and Kirker (1977) showed that self-referential judgments were more likely to encourage organization than semantic ones. Therefore, they suggested the self-reference effect was likely due to the organizational processing endured by self-referential encoding.

Structural, phonemic and semantic tasks within the depth of processing paradigm require words to be considered individually, and lend themselves to an elaborative approach. As such, it can be argued that self-referential encoding is superior because it leads to an indirect division of words into categories: words that describe me versus words that do not. Due to this connection between self-reference and organizational processing, further research has been done on this area. Klein and Kihlstrom's research suggests first that, like previous research, self-reference led to better recall than semantic and structural encoding. Second, they found that self-referentially encoded words were more clustered in recall than words from other tasks, suggesting higher levels of organizational processing. From this they concluded that the organization, not encoding task, is what makes self-referential encoding superior

Dual process

Psychologists Einstein and Hunt showed that both elaborative processing and organizational processing facilitate recall. However, their research argues that the effectiveness of either approach depends on how related the stimulus words are to one another. A list of highly related stimulus words would be better encoded using the elaborative method. The relations between the words would be evident to subjects; therefore, they would not gain any additional pathways for retrieval by encoding the words based on their categorical membership. Instead, the other information gained through elaborative processing would be more beneficial. On the other hand, a list of stimulus words with little relation would be better stored to memory through the organizational method. Since the words have no obvious connection to one another, subjects would likely encode them individually, using an elaborative approach. Since relational information wouldn't be readily detected, focusing on it would add to memory by creating new traces for retrieval.

Ultimately, the exact processes behind self-referential encoding that makes it superior to other encoding tasks are still under debate. Research suggests that if elaborative processing is behind self-referential encoding, a self-referential task should have the same effect as an elaborative task, whereas if organizational processing underlies the self-reference effect self-referential encoding tasks should function like organizational tasks. To test this, Klein and Loftus ran a 3x2 study testing organizational, elaborative and self-referential encoding with lists of 30 related or unrelated words. When participants were asked to memorize the unrelated list, recall and clustering were higher for the organizational task, which produced almost equal results to the self-referential task, suggesting that has an organizational basis. For the list of related words, the elaborative task led to better recall and had matched results to the self-reference task, suggesting an elaborative basis. This research, then, suggests that the self-reference effect cannot be explained by a single type of processing. Instead, self-referential encoding must lead to information in memory that incorporates item specific and relational information.

Overall, the SRE relies on the unique mnemonic aspects of the self. Ultimately, if the research is suggesting that the self has superior elaborative or organizational properties, information related to the self should be more easily remembered and recalled. The research presented suggests that self-referential encoding is superior because it promotes organization and elaboration simultaneously, and provides self-relevant categories that promote recall.

Social brain science

The field of social brain science is aimed at examining the neural foundations of social behavior. Neuroimaging and neuropsychology have led to the examination of neuroanatomy and its connection to psychological topics. Through this research, neuropsychologists have found a connection between social cognitive functioning and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). In addition, the mPFC has been connected to reflection and introspection about personal mental states. Supporting these findings, it has been shown that damage to the mPFC is connected to impairments with self-reflection, introspection and daydreaming, as well as social competence, but not other areas of functioning. As such, the mPFC has been connected to self-referential processing.

The research discussed by those focusing on the neuroanatomy of self-referential processing included similar tasks to the memory and depth of processing research discussed previously. When participants were asked to judge adjectives based in whether or not they were self-descriptive, it was noted that the more self-relevant the trait, the stronger the activation of the mPFC. In addition, it was shown that the mPFC was activated during the appraisal of one's own personality traits, as well as during trait retrieval. In fact, one study showed that the more activity in the mPFC during self-referential judgments, the more likely the word was to be remembered on a subsequent surprise memory test. These results suggest that the mPFC is involved in both self-referential processing and in creating self-relevant memories.

Depth of processing or cognitive structure

Given all of the neurological support for the effect of self-reference on encoding and memory, there is still a debate in the psychological community about whether or not the self-reference effect signifies a special functional role played by the self in cognition. Generally, this question is met by people that have two opposing views on the processes behind self-reference. On one side of the debate, people believe that the self has special mnemonic abilities because it is a unique cognitive structure. On the other side, people support the arguments described above that suggest there is no special structure, but instead, the self-reference effect is simply a part of the standard depth of processing hierarchy. Since the overall hypothesis is the same for both sides of the debate, that self-relevant material leads to enhanced memory, it is difficult to test them using strictly behavioral measures. Therefore, PET and fMRI scans have been used to see the neural marker of self-referential mental activity.

Previous studies have shown that areas of the left prefrontal cortex are activated during semantic encoding. Therefore, if the self-reference effect works the same way, as part of the depth of processing hierarchy, the same brain region should be activated when judging traits related to the self. However, if the self has unique mnemonic properties, then self-referential tasks should activate brain regions distinct from those activated during semantic tasks. The field is still at is infancy, but future work on this hypothesis might help to settle the debate about the underlying processes of self-referential encoding.

Self-discrepancies demonstrate the properties that are necessary for cognitive structures. Schema is one of the cognitive structures that contribute to the explanation of some of the biases that occur when information is processes about oneself. Similar to the cognitive structure of the schema are scripts and frames. The self-schema is described as both a “cognitive generalization about the self that comes from a past experience,” and “a list of terms that come from past experiences that encode in one’s personal data.” Information to oneself about oneself is cognitively relevant and attractive as well and properly structured. In the studies done by mills, cognitive structures are seen as a focal point. In recent studies, gender is starting to be seen as a cognitive schema along with the others. different levels of processing from a cognitive vantage point consist of existing information that bases the interactions with incoming information that become encoded in one’s memory.

Simulation theory

While not able to completely settle the debate over the foundation of self-referential processing, studies on the neurological aspect of personality trait judgments did lead to a related, significant result. It has been shown that judging personality traits about oneself and a close friend activated overlapping brain regions, and the activated regions have all been implicated in self-reference. Noting the similarity between making self-judgments and judgments about close others led to the introduction of the simulation theory of empathy. Simulation theory rests on the idea that one can make inferences about others by using the knowledge they have about themselves. In essence, the theory suggests that people use self-reflection to understand or predict the mental state of others. In fact, the more similar a person perceives another to be, the more active the mPFC has shown to be, suggesting more deep or intricate self-reference. However, this effect can cause people to make inaccurate judgments about others or to believe that their own opinions are representative of others in general. This misrepresentation is referred to as the false-consensus effect.

Applications

Once the foundation of research on self-referential encoding was established, psychologists began to explore how the concept applied to different groups of people, and connected to different phenomenon.

Autism spectrum disorder

Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) can display a wide range of symptoms. Some of the most common characteristics of individuals with ASDs include impairments with social functioning, language and communication difficulties, repetitive behaviors and restricted interests. In addition, it is often noted that these individuals are more "self-focused." That is, they have difficulty seeing things from another's perspective. Despite being self-focused, though, research has shown that individuals with ASD's often have difficulty identifying or describing their emotions or the emotions of others. When asked to describe their daily experiences, responses from individuals on the autism spectrum tended to focus more on physical descriptions rather than mental and emotional states. In regards to their social interactions and behavior differences, it is thought that these individuals lack top down control, and therefore, their bottom up decisions remain unchecked. This simply suggests that these individuals cannot use their prior knowledge and memory to make sense of new input, but instead react to each new input individually, compiling them to make a whole picture

Noting the difficulty individuals with ASDs experience with self-awareness, it was thought that they might have difficulty with self-related memory processes. Psychologists questioned if these individuals would show the typical self-reference effect in memory. In one Depth of Processing Study, participants were asked questions about the descriptiveness of certain stimulus words. However, unlike previous DOP studies that focused on phonemic, structural, semantic and self-referential tasks, the tasks were altered for this experiment. To test the referential abilities of individuals with ASD's, the encoding tasks were divided into: "the self," asking to what extent a stimulus word described oneself, "similar close other," asking to what extent a stimulus word was descriptive of one's best friend, "dissimilar non-close other," asking to what extent a stimulus word was descriptive of Harry Potter, and a control group that was asked to determine the number of syllables in each word. Following these encoding tasks, participants were given thirty minutes before a surprise memory task. It was found that individuals with ASD's had no impairment in memory for words encoded in the syllable or dissimilar non-close other condition. However, they had decreased memory for words related to the self.

Therefore, while research suggests that self-referentially encoded information is encoded more deeply than other information, the research on individuals with ASD's showed no advantage for memory recognition with self-reference tasks over semantic encoding tasks. This suggests that individuals with ASD's don't preferentially encode self-relevant information. Psychologists have investigated the biological basis for the decreased self-reference effect among individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders and have suggested that it may be due to less specialized neural activity in the mPFC for those individuals. However, while individuals with ASD's showed smaller self-reference effects than the control group, some evidence of a self-reference effect was evident in some cases. This indicates that self-referent impairments are a matter of degree, not total absence.

Lombardo and his colleagues measured empathy among individuals with ASD's, and showed that these individuals scored lower than the control group on all empathy measures. This may be a result of the difficulty for these individuals to understand or take the perspective of others, in conjunction with their difficulty identifying emotions. This has implications for simulation theory, because these individuals are unable to use their self-knowledge to make conclusions about similar others.

Ultimately, the research suggests that people with ASD's might benefit from being more self-focused. The better their ability to reflect on themselves, the better the can mentalize with others.

Depression

There are three major issues that confront the idea of cognitive research done on anxiety and depression. The first is whether cognitive processes are actually onset from clinically diagnosed symptoms of depression or just generalized sadness or anxiousness. The second is whether emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety are able to be considered caused by cognitions. And the third is whether different specific cognitive processes are able to be considered associates of different disorders. Kovacs and Beck (1977) were two particular researchers that demonstrated a schematic model of depression where an already depressed self was primed by outside prompts that negatively impacted cognitive illusions of the world in the eye of oneself. These prompts only led participants to a more depressive series of emotions and behavior. The results from the study done by Derry and Kuiper (1981) supported this proposal from Beck that a negative self-schema is present in people, especially those with depressive disorder. Depressed individuals attribute depressive adjectives to themselves more than nondepressive adjectives. Those suffering from a more mild case of depression have trouble deciphering between the traits of themselves and others which results in a loss of their self-esteem and their negative self-evaluation. A depressive schema is what causes the negativity reported by those suffering from depression. In the Kuiper and Derry study, the self-referent recall enhancement was limited only to nondepressed content. Davis’s clients showed depressive self-referential processing when their span of depression was on the longer spectrum. These clients had a depressive experience in their past that led them to have this depressive self-schema.