Caudek Corrado
Department of Neurosciences, Psychology, Drug Research, and Child Health (NEUROFARBA), Università degli Studi di Firenze, Via di San Salvi, 12, Complesso di San Salvi, Padiglione 26, 50135 Firenze, FI, Italy.
Conscious Cogn. 2014 Nov;30:169-83. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.08.017. Epub 2014 Oct 6.
Self-referenced information is better recalled than other-referenced information - a mnemonic advantage known as the "self-reference effect" (SRE). By using a modified version of the "think/no-think" (TNT) paradigm (Anderson & Green, 2001), this study examined the effects of cognitive control on the SRE after the encoding stage. The results indicate that individual differences in personality traits and affective states strongly modulated the SRE after the TNT phase. For individuals high in negative cognitive style, an ironic enhancement of negative self-referenced memory produced a "maladaptive" SRE: better memory for negative self-referenced information than for negative other-referenced information, when trying to suppress that information. Before the TNT phase, instead, the SRE was characterized by the opposite bias. These results indicate that (1) the SRE is strongly affected by cognitive control after encoding, and (2) also in the non-clinical population, dysfunctional cognitive control can transform the SRE into a "maladaptive" memory bias.
