The nature of self-referent encoding: The contributions of elaborative and organizational processes.

Abstract

A number of investigators have demonstrated that relating information to the self (self-referent encoding) produces better recall than structural or semantic encoding of the same material. The mechanisms responsible for this self-referent recall advantage, however, still are not well understood. Some have proposed an elaborative processing explanation (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), whereas others have argued for an organizational processing interpretation (e.g., Klein & KJhlstrom, 1986). We present a paradigm for clarifying the respective contributions of these two processes to the recall of material encoded self-referentially. Our findings suggest that both elaborative and organizational processes are involved, but which process plays the larger role in recall depends on the material being judged. We discuss the implications of a dual-processing explanation of self-referent encoding.