The Experimental Studies Of Implicit Self-Reference Of Memory

The self-reference effect is that the memory information which is related to the self has shown better recall effect than other encoding strategies, even better than semantic encoding. Since 1977 when Rogers and his colleagues had expanded depth of processing paradigm to the area of self and discovered self-reference effect, more and more psychologists paid attention to this field. Recently, the study of self-reference effect, which is combined with culture difference between china and the western, becomes a new trend. At the same time, the self played pivotal role in memory forming, organizing and distilling. What the self notices and selects will affect the subsequent memory. There is conscious and unconscious memory information in the process of distilling. Therefore, to separate the conscious and unconscious memory information is important aspect in the field of self-reference effect.This study contains two parts. The first study used R/K paradigm and discussed the influence of attention state on self-reference effect by controlling subjects' attention state in encoding phase. The second study separated the conscious level in the information distilling, used R/K/F/G paradigm and discussed self-reference effect on the unconscious level. It validated former researchers' study. And self-reference effect on the unconscious level was studied by applying signal detection theory. The results are as follows:1) Under the background of Chinese culture, the concept of one's self contains the intimate others, such as his mother and father, and they become a dependent "whole".2) The control for attention level affects self-reference effect. Subjects represent the self-reference effect under the concentrated attention state, but don't represent the self-reference effect under the disperse attention state because of the influence of interrupt items. The aim of subliminal attention is to examine the effect of subliminal priming effect of personality trait adjective on self-reference, and results indicate that it doesn't show the self-reference effect under the subliminal attention condition.3) Subjects' consciousness level in distilling phase was controlled by our guidance in order to further discuss self-reference effect. The R/K/F/G paradigm was used in this paper. Result indicates that the self-reference effect is only found in R response, which is consistent with the former studies.4) In implicit self-reference effect, recognition memory scores related to self is at the same level of mother-reference and father-reference. But there is significant difference between mother-reference's memory score and father-reference's. Foreign study on parents' role difference provides theory support for it.This paper explores individuals' self-reference effect on the unconscious level, and offers clue for the research of brain function orientation of self-reference effect on the unconscious level.