Self reference effect
자기참조 효과
Also known as: self-referential encoding
Information processed in relation to oneself is remembered better, and the gap is larger for children.
In a classic study with adults, words judged for whether they described the self were remembered better than words judged only for meaning (Rogers et al., 1977).
The gap is larger the younger the learner (Cunningham et al., 2013). With picture books specifically, 18 children averaging 3 years 10 months knew more of the new words that appeared in the personalized parts of a book read to them twice (Kucirkova et al., 2014).
This is one of the reasons personalized learning material works: a picture book whose hero has the child's face, or word cards drawn from a photo of their own room.
- ConditionThe child has to feel it is theirs. Swapping in a name alone is a weak version.
- RelatedStacks with joint attention and dual coding.