Minimal ownership: cognitive effects and underlying mechanisms Mirjam van den Bos University of Aberdeen, UK

What is ‘self’? We all know what it is, but it’s hard to define.....what is ‘time’? “…in order to remain who you are from minute to minute, day to day, and year to year, your brain must somehow retain the essence of who you are over time. In the end then, the self is essentially a memory, or more accurately, a set of memories.” Joseph LeDoux (2003)

Self and Memory Does this trait describe you?

Self and Memory Does this trait describe you? intelligent

Self and Memory Does this trait describe you? intelligent Does this trait describe Person X?

Self and Memory Does this trait describe you? intelligent Does this trait describe Person X? reliable

Self and Memory Does this trait describe you? intelligent Does this trait describe Person X? reliable Memory advantage for information linked to self

Self Reference Effect (SRE) How can it be explained: - self as superordinate schema (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977) - ‘any well-differentiated person will do’ (Bower & Gilligan, 1979) - level of processing effect (Ferguson, Rule, & Carlson, 1983) - organization (Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986; Symons & Johnson, 1997) Current view: self is special (e.g., Turk, Cunningham, & Macrae, 2008)

Creating self-effects with other methods Objects owned by self James (1890): “A man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account’’.

Objects used to define, extend or compensate self (Belk, 1988; Beggan, 1991) Self-serving bias (James, 1890) Owned objects more favourable (Beggan, 1992) ‘You are what you own’

Shopping paradigm (Cunningham, Turk, Macdonald, & Macrae, 2008) Stimuli: 216 items 72 self-owned targets 72 other-owned targets 72 distractors 2 (ownership) x 2 (action) design

Baskets not always practical (e.g., in MRI scanner) Items always are presented with colour cue Is engaging with objects important for the memory effect?

Shopping Paradigm (2) (Van den Bos, Cunningham, Conway, & Turk, in press) Stimuli: 150 images: - 50 self-owned targets - 50 other-owned targets - 50 distractors at test Single-factor (Ownership) within-subjects design

Results Ownership: F(1,27) = 6.389, MSe = 0.003, p =.018

Spontaneous elaboration Arousal (e.g., Williams, Diehl, & Mahoney, 2002) Attention (e.g., Bredart, Delchambre, & Laureys, 2006) Ecological function (e.g., Ingold & Gibson, 1993; Nairne, 2005) Conclusions

Thank you!

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(references) Ferguson, T. J., Rule, G. R., & Carlson, D. ( 1983 ). Memory for personally relevant information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, Ingold, T. & Gibson, K. R. (1993). Tools, language and cognition in human evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klein, S. B., & Kihlstrom, J. E (1986). Elaboration, organization, and the self-reference effect in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 115, LeDoux, J. (2003). The emotional brain, fear and the amygdala. Cellular and molecular Neurobiology, 23, Nairne, J. S. (2005). The functionalist agenda in memory research. In A. F. Healy (Ed.), Experimental cognitive psychology and its applications: Festschrift in honor of Lyle Bourne, Walter Kintsch, and Thomas Landauer. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Rogers, T. B., Kuiper, N.A., & Kirker, W.S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, Symons, C. S., & Johnson, B. T. (1997). The self-reference effect in memory: A meta- analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 371–394. Williams, A. M., Diehl, N. S., & Mahoney, M. J. (2002). Mirror time: Empirical findings and implications for a constructivist psychotherapeutic technique. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 15, 21–39.

Raw data Van den Bos et al. (in press) Means and Standard Deviations of Overall Recognition, Remember Hit Rate (HTR) and Know HTR, by Ownership Conditions. Ownership SelfOther Overall HTR X SD Remember HTR X SD Know HTR X SD Guess HTR X SD

(Raw data Van den Bos et al., in press) Means and Standard Deviations of Remember, Know and Guess False-Alarm Rates. False-Alarm rates RememberKnowGuess X SD