Department of Psychology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA.
Soc Neurosci. 2021 Aug;16(4):406-422. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2021.1929460. Epub 2021 May 25.
The self-reference effect in memory (SRE), in which stimuli related to self are better remembered than other stimuli, has been studied often in the fMRI literature, but much less with EEG. In two experiments, we investigated how self-referencing modulated event-related potential (ERP) markers of the subsequent memory effect, testing whether the same components that reflect memory success are impacted or whether unique components are modulated by self-referencing. Participants were asked to evaluate whether an adjective accurately described either the self or a given other by making a yes/no key press during EEG recording. Then participants were given a surprise recognition memory test where they judged each adjective as old or new. We observed a main effect of self-relevance on a late positivity at right frontal electrodes. A very similar effect was observed when comparing words subsequently remembered to those that were forgotten. However, no interaction was found between self-relevance and subsequent memory, suggesting the frontal positivity is not exclusive to the SRE, but instead a reflection of deeper encoding that leads to better memory. Thus, this frontal positivity may be a marker of a deeper encoding process that is elicited by self-referencing but not exclusive to the SRE.
记忆中的自我参照效应（SRE）是指与自我相关的刺激比其他刺激更容易被记住，这在 fMRI 文献中经常被研究，但在 EEG 中研究得较少。在两项实验中，我们研究了自我参照如何调节事件相关电位（ERP）对随后记忆效应的标记，以测试反映记忆成功的相同成分是否受到影响，还是自我参照调节了独特的成分。参与者被要求在 EEG 记录期间通过按下是/否键来判断一个形容词是否准确地描述了自我或特定的他人。然后，参与者接受了一个惊喜的识别记忆测试，他们判断每个形容词是旧的还是新的。我们观察到自我相关性对右额电极的后期正性的主要影响。当比较随后记住的单词和忘记的单词时，观察到了非常相似的效果。然而，没有发现自我相关性和随后记忆之间的相互作用，这表明额叶正性波不仅仅是 SRE 的反映，而是对导致更好记忆的更深层次编码的反映。因此，这种额叶正性波可能是自我参照引发的更深层次编码过程的标记，但不是 SRE 的唯一反映。
