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Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical memory is a unique type of episodic memory that involves recollecting personal life experiences. It allows individuals to remember significant events from their past, creating a narrative of their lives. One interesting phenomenon related to autobiographical memory is the reminiscence bump. This effect refers to the tendency of adults to recall more events from their second and third decades of life — typically between ages 10 to 30 — than from other periods. This period is...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 14, 2026

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation
06:53

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Published on: March 1, 2017

Yours or mine? Ownership and memory.

Sheila J Cunningham1, David J Turk, Lynda M Macdonald

  • 1School of Psychology, William Guild Building, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 2UB, Scotland, UK. sheila.cunningham@abdn.ac.uk

Consciousness and Cognition
|June 5, 2007
PubMed
Summary

Ownership enhances memory for objects. Studies show that owning an item, rather than just interacting with it, improves recall. This highlights the significance of self-object associations in cognitive processes.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • The self plays a crucial role in identifying personally relevant external objects.
  • Self-relevant context enhances memory encoding, a phenomenon known as the self-reference effect.
  • Ownership may serve as a mechanism for establishing self-relevance.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the impact of object ownership on memory performance.
  • To determine if mere ownership, independent of action, influences memory.
  • To explore the role of self-object associations in cognition.

Main Methods:

  • Participants engaged in tasks involving picture cards and two baskets, one designated as 'self' and the other as 'other'.
  • Experimental manipulation involved participants either moving cards into baskets or observing their movement.
  • A recognition test was administered to assess memory for the picture cards.

Main Results:

  • A significant memory advantage was observed for objects associated with the self (owned objects).
  • Performing an action (moving items) did not significantly impact memory performance.
  • The findings suggest that ownership, not action, is the key factor in self-object memory enhancement.

Conclusions:

  • Mere ownership of objects enhances memory recall.
  • Self-object associations are important for cognitive processes, particularly memory.
  • Future research should further explore the mechanisms underlying ownership-based memory benefits.