The Role of the Self in Recollections of a Seminar

Abstract

Abstract It has often been suggested that memory for life experiences is primarily orga-nized around the self. To test this hypothesis, students who had participated in a semester-long seminar were asked to recall various events (e.g., discussions in which they had participated, reports that they or others had presented, class demonstrations, interruptions, etc.). It was not the case that these cued recalls were primarily organized around the self. The self played only a small part in the recall of some types of events, and the students remembered others' contribu-tions to class discussions just as well as their own. The self was remembered differently from others in one major respect: Although subjects often recalled their own thoughts and feelings, they rarely made such "cognitive attributions" to others. Differences in the availability of various kinds of information may be chiefly responsible for whatever special status the self has in memory. (Psychol-ogy)