The Developmental Characteristics Of Memory-reference Effect Of Middle And Primary School Students Under Different Memory-reference Paradigm

Through the literature review and analysis of previous studies about the self-reference effect, thispaper mainly researched the developmental characteristics of middle and primary school students’memory-reference effect under the classic self-reference paradigm and the incident encoding paradigm,investigates whether there are differences between middle and primary school students’ memory-referenceeffect, and proves whether the type of adjective has the influence on middle and primary school students’memory-reference effect.Using experimental method as research method and the adjective of personality traits asexperimental material, this dissertation selected104students in grade six and grade eight. The studyincludes two experiments. In experiment I, we employed a mixed design three factors, i.e.2(grades: gradesix, grade eight)×3(reference conditions: self-reference, mother-reference, friend-reference)×2(type ofadjective: positive adjective, negative adjective) to investigate the developmental characteristics of middleand primary school students’ memory-reference effect under the classic self-reference paradigm. Inexperiment II, we use the same design as experiment I to investigate the developmental characteristics ofmiddle and primary school students’ memory-reference effect under the incident encoding paradigm.The main conclusions of this study are the following:First, the mean reaction time and error rate of grade Six is significantly higher than that of gradeEight.Second, there is a significant difference between the middle students’ and the primary schoolstudents’ memory-reference. There is self-reference effect and mother-reference effect but nofriend-reference effect in grade Six. There are self-reference effect, mother-reference effect andfriend-reference effect in grade Eight, and the friend-reference effect is bigger than mother-reference effect.Third, there is a conspicuous difference between different types of adjective. The averageresponse time of positive adjective is significantly lower than that of negative adjective, and the error rateof positive adjective is significantly lower than that of negative adjective. Either in the positive adjective orthe negative adjective, the mean reaction time and error rate of grade Six is significantly higher than that of grade Eight..Fourth, there is a conspicuous difference between the middle students’ and the primary schoolstudents’ memory-reference under the classic self-reference paradigm and the incident encoding paradigm.The memorial result of classic self-reference paradigm is significantly higher than that of the incidentencoding paradigm.