The Incidental Self-Reference Effect in Patients with Schizophrenia

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Live Poster Session: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/6541715127

Alex Ramsden
Alex Ramsden

Alex Ramsden is a graduating senior (’22) who is double majoring in Psychology and Neuroscience & Behavior. She is particularly interested in neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, PTSD, and OCD. After Wesleyan, Alex plans to pursue graduate work in the field of Behavioral Neuroscience. Outside of the lab, she captains the Wesleyan Field Hockey team and enjoys reading, rollerblading, and spending time with friends.

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Stephen Philipps
Stephen Philipps

Stephen Philipps (’22) is a Psychology and Music double major. In the Memory, Cognition, and Self (MCS) Lab, he is researching the self-reference effect in people with schizophrenia and the interaction between psychological distance and memory specificity. Outside of the lab, his interests include environmental activism, musical composition, and backpacking. After Wesleyan, Stephen is interested in pursuing a career in the field of Ecopsychology.

Gabriella Feder
Gabriella Feder

Gabriella Feder (BA’20/MA’21), a recent graduate of Wesleyan University, was a Psychology and Neuroscience & Behavior double major. She is pursuing a career in medicine/psychiatry, and is currently working at Northern Westchester Hospital. She is broadly interested in the relationship between cognition and psychopathology.

Abstract: The self-reference effect (SRE) refers to a memory advantage arising from relating to-be-learned information to the self at encoding. There are two types of SREs: The evaluate SRE occurs when a task explicitly requires individuals to evaluate information in relation to themselves, while the incidental SRE occurs when a self-referential cue (e.g., one’s own name) is co-presented with information but is purely incidental to a given task. The evaluative SRE is suggested to be underpinned by enhanced elaboration/organization of information within a rich network of self-knowledge, while the incidental SRE is suggested to arise due to automatic/preferential attentional responses to self-relevant information. The evaluative SRE has been shown to be absent in patients with schizophrenia, but the impact of schizophrenia on the incidental SRE remains to be determined. In the present study, we first had patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls make simple location judgments for words that appeared above or below a centrally-presented name (the participant’s name or the name of a public figure). Then, their memory for the words was tested in a surprise recognition test. We found that both the patients and healthy controls better remembered the words that were co-presented with their own name compared to those co-presented with another person’s name. Importantly, the magnitudes of this incidental SRE did not significantly differ between the patients and healthy controls. Though preliminary, our findings suggest that a spontaneous/incidental form of self-related processing may be preserved in schizophrenia.

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