There’s no question that our ability
to remember informs our sense of self. Now research published
in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association
for Psychological Science, provides new evidence that the
relationship may also work the other way around: Invoking our sense
of self can influence what we are able to remember.
Research has shown that
self-imagination – imagining something from a personal perspective
– can be an effective strategy for helping us to recognize
something we’ve seen before or retrieve specific information on
cue. And these beneficial effects have been demonstrated for both
healthy adults and for individuals who suffer memory impairments as a
result of brain injury.
These findings suggest that
self-imagination is a promising strategy for memory rehabilitation.
But no study has investigated the effect of self-imagination on what
is perhaps the most difficult, and most relevant, type of memory:
free recall.
Psychological scientists Matthew Grilli
and Elizabeth Glisky of the University of Arizona decided to put
self-imagination to the test. They wanted to compare self-imagination
to more traditional strategies that involve sense of self in order to
gain a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms that might
be at work.
The researchers recruited 15 patients
with acquired brain injury who had impaired memory and 15 healthy
participants with normal memory to take part in the study. Over the
course of the study, the participants were asked to memorize five
lists of 24 adjectives that described personality traits. As they
were presented with each personality trait, the participants were
instructed to employ one of five strategies: think of a word that
rhymes with the trait (baseline), think of a definition for the trait
(semantic elaboration), think about how the trait describes them
(semantic self-referential processing), think of a time when they
acted out the trait (episodic self-referential processing), or
imagine acting out the trait (self-imagining).
For all participants, healthy and
memory-impaired, self-imagination boosted free recall of the
personality traits more than any of the other strategies did.
Comparing the more traditional
self-referential strategies, Grilli and Glisky found that the
participants with memory impairments were better able to remember a
word if they were asked to think about how well it described them
(semantic) than if they were asked to think about a time when they
acted out the personality trait (episodic).
This result falls in line with previous
findings that knowledge about specific events from the past is often
impaired in patients with brain injury. It also lends support to the
researchers’ hypothesis that the benefit of self-imagination for
memory-impaired patients might be related to their ability to
retrieve knowledge regarding their own personality traits, identity
roles, and lifetime periods.
The researchers believe that their
findings could have important applications for memory rehabilitation.
“Based on the results of our
laboratory research,” Grilli said, “it might be possible to adapt
self-imagination to help patients with memory problems remember
information encountered in everyday life, such as what they read in a
book or heard on the news.”
Self-imagination could also help
clinicians in teaching memory-impaired individuals how to use memory
aides that can enhance their independence. For example, this approach
could help improve their ability to remember to program and
consistently use smartphones to manage everyday errands, such as
taking medication, purchasing items at a grocery store, or attending
social events. Self-imagination could also be used to help
individuals suffering from brain injury learn complex skills in order
to return to the workplace.
“An important future step will be to
investigate how to most effectively apply self-imagination in a
rehabilitation program to make a meaningful impact on the lives of
people with memory impairment,” Grilli said.
Grilli and Glisky conclude that the
possible applications of their findings are quite broad since
episodic memory deficits are linked with various conditions,
including autism, depression, and normal aging.
For more information about this study,
please contact: Matthew D. Grilli at mdgrilli@email.arizona.edu.
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