Consciousness and self-reference

Reflection on the self's way of being in consciousness yields two arguments for a theory of self-reference not based inany wayat all on self-cognition. First, I show that one theory of self-reference predicts an experience of the self because the theory inadequately analyzes the semantical facts about indexicality. I construct a dilemma for this cognitivism, which it cannot get out of, for it requires evensolitary self-reference to be based on some original self-knowledge, which is not available. I describe my kinetic model of unspoken self-reference, and I show how it fits the facts of four forms of consciousness, all of which presuppose self-reference, rather than yield it. Second, aspeaker uses the first person pronoun in sentences because she is aware of the unmediated role in agency of the beliefs she would express, and not because she is aware of herself in their content. The cognitive model, in contrast, succumbs to a vicious regress and is exposed as an obstacle to an understanding of consciousness.A version of this essay was read at Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta (February 1985), University of North Bengal (March 1985) and Jadavpur University (March 1985). My thanks to S. Basu and S. Chakraborty at Rabindra Bharati, and to M. Ghosh and S. K. Sen at North Bengal, and to Ch. Gupta and P. K. Sen of Jadavpur University. Jadavpur's Prof. Sen's extensive comments in support of the cognitive model of reference led me to revise the essay thoroughly. North Bengal University may have published a version of this essay. I also thank Kent Baldner and the referees of this journal for insightful comments forcing further revisions.     

Uniform self-reference

Self-referential sentences have played a key role in Tarski's proof [9] of the non-definibility of arithmetic truth within arithmetic and Gödel's proof [2] of the incompleteness of Peano Arithmetic. In this article we consider some new methods of achieving self-reference in a uniform manner.     

Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self-reference

A representationalist analysis of strong first-person phenomena is developed (Baker 1998), and it is argued that conscious, cognitive self-reference can be naturalized under this representationalist analysis. According to this view, the phenomenal first-person perspective is a condition of possibility for the emergence of a cognitive first-person perspective. Cognitive self-reference always is reference to the phenomenal content of a transparent self-model. The concepts of phenomenal transparency and introspection are clarified. More generally, I suggest that the concepts of phenomenal opacity and phenomenal transparency are interesting instruments for analyzing conscious, self-representational content, and that their relevance in understanding reflexive, i.e., cognitive subjectivity may have been overlooked in the past.     

Ageing and the self-reference effect in memory

The present study investigates potential age differences in the self-reference effect. Young and older adults incidentally encoded adjectives by deciding whether the adjective described them, described another person (Experiments 1 & 2), was a trait they found desirable (Experiment 3), or was presented in upper case. Like young adults, older adults exhibited superior recognition for self-referenced items relative to the items encoded with the alternate orienting tasks, but self-referencing did not restore their memory to the level of young adults. Furthermore, the self-reference effect was more limited for older adults. Amount of cognitive resource influenced how much older adults benefit from self-referencing, and older adults appeared to extend the strategy less flexibly than young adults. Self-referencing improves older adults' memory, but its benefits are circumscribed despite the social and personally relevant nature of the task.     

Mood and the self-reference bias in recall

Hypotheses linking a negative recall bias (or negative self-schema) with vulnerability to depression were tested using an experimental mood-induction task. Extent of bias in student subjects was found to be unstable over a 4-month period, but different measures of memory bias within one session were highly correlated. Marginally significant correlations in the expected direction were found between estimates of recall bias and mood state, whether measured at the same or at different times. Change in mood following induction did not relate to change in bias, suggesting that the observed differences in recall are not a simple function of transient mood state alone. Equally, the initial recall bias did not predict the extent of mood shift following induction, as would be expected if a negative self-schema determined ease of mood shift in a negative direction. However, significant correlations were found between negative recall bias and self-reported frequency and severity of depression, lending equivocal support to the negative self-schema model.     

Depressed and nondepressed content self-reference in mild depressives

The present research investigated the extent to which mild depressives and normals differed in their self-referent processing of personal information. In Experiment 1, these subjects made two types of ratings on depressed (e.g., bleak, dismal) and nondepressed (e.g., loyal, organized) content personal adjectives. Half of the adjectives in each content category were rated for a semantic attribute (Does this word have a specific meaning or relate to a specific situation?), whereas half were rated for degree of self-reference (Does this word describe you?). These ratings were followed immediately by an incidental recall task, in which subjects recalled as many of the adjectives as possible. Consistent with predictions generated from a content-specific self-schema model, normals displayed superior recall for self-referenced nondepressed content adjectives, when compared to recall for self-referenced depressed content adjectives and recall for semantic ratings (both depressed and nondepressed content). In contrast, mild depressives exhibited enhanced self-referent recall for both types of content, when compared to their recall for semantic adjectives. This finding suggested that mild depressives utilize a self-schema which incorporates both depressed and nondepressed content. Experiment 2 explored this suggestion further by substituting an other-referent rating task (Does this word describe Pierre Trudeau?) for the semantic judgment used in Experiment 1. Again, consistent with a content-specific self-schema model, normals displayed superior recall only for self-referenced nondepressed adjectives. Mild depressives, however, showed enhanced self-referent recall, relative to other-referent recall, only for depressed content adjectives. For nondepressed content, mild depressives did not distinguish between the self- and other-referent conditions. This finding hinted that the nondepressed component of the mild depressives self-schema may operate at a somewhat reduced effectiveness, but only when required to differentiate between self and others.     

Anxiety,feedback, and self-reference in face recognition

During an incidental learning phase, high and low test-anxious subjects made judgments about people in facial photographs, comparing the person to either themselves (self-reference) or absolute (nonself) standards with regard to intelligence or dependability. On a subsequent unannounced recognition test, feedback emphasized either correct or incorrect responses. Low-anxiety subjects benefited somewhat from both types of feedback, relative to no feedback, whereas anxious subjects were not affected by error-oriented feedback and somewhat hindered by success-oriented feedback. There was no evidence for a relationship between anxiety and self-reference, and no evidence for facilitation from self-reference relative to nonself processing. The results are discussed in terms of Zajonc's (1980) analysis of the role of affect in memory and test-anxiety theories of self-monitoring.The authors would like to acknowledge helpful comments on an earlier draft by several people, especially Matt Marler and Theresa Whitelock.     

Elaboration, organization, and the self-reference effect in memory

Relating information to the self (self-referent encoding) has been shown to produce better recall than purely semantic encoding. This finding has been interpreted as demonstrating that self-reference produces a more elaborate memory trace than semantic encoding, and it has been cited frequently as evidence that the self is one of the most highly elaborated structures in memory. The experiments reported in this article challenge this interpretation of the self-reference effect by demonstrating that self-referent and semantic encodings produce virtually identical free recall levels if they are first equated for the amount of organization they encourage. On the basis of our findings we conclude the following: Organization, not elaboration, is responsible for the superior recall performance obtained when information is encoded self-referentially, and organization is not a necessary component of self-referent encoding and can be orthogonally varied within self-referent and semantic encoding tasks. Finally, we discuss how a single-factor theory based on organization can account for many of the self-referent recall findings reported in the literature.     

外倾个体的自我参照加工程度效应

采用事件相关电位技术和三类刺激的经典oddball范式,以内隐的方式探讨外倾特质个体的自我参照加工程度效应及其神经机制。实验发现,外倾被试的高自我相关名字在各个ERP成分上都比其他刺激诱发了更大波幅。在P2上,高自我相关的刺激比其他刺激诱发了更大的P2波幅和更长的P2潜伏期,其中中线脑区的效应最大。在N2上,高自我相关的刺激比其他刺激诱发了更大的N2波幅和更短的N2潜伏期,其中额区位置的效应最大。控制组被试的高自我相关名字比外倾型被试的高自我相关名字诱发了更大的N2的波幅和更短的N2潜伏期。在P3平均波幅上,高自我相关的刺激比其他刺激诱发了更大的P3波幅,其中中线效应最大。对比外倾型被试,控制组被试的自我参照刺激诱发了更大的P3波幅。研究结果表明外倾特质个体的自我参照加工具有程度效应,但对比控制组被试,外倾特质个体的自我参照加工的程度效应更弱。     

The inclosure scheme and the solution to the paradoxes of self-reference

Proponents of the explanatory gap claim that consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account of how a physical thing could be identical to a phenomenal one. We fully understand the identity between water and H₂O but the identity between pain and the firing of C-fibers is inconceivable. Mark Johnston [Journal of philosophy (1997), 564–583] suggests that if water is constituted by H₂O, not identical to it, then the explanatory gap becomes a pseudo-problem. This is because all “manifest kinds”—those identified in experience—are on a par in not being identical to their physical bases, so that the special problem of the inconceivability of ‘pain = the firing of C-fibers’ vanishes. Moreover, the substitute relation, constitution, raises no explanatory difficulties: pain can be constituted by its physical base, as can water. The thesis of this paper is that the EG does not disappear when we substitute constitution for identity. I examine four arguments for the EG, and show that none of them is undermined by the move from constitution to identity.     

The self-reference effect: Methodological issues and implications from a schema-theoretical perspective

A number of investigators demonstrated that processing verbal stimuli by encoding them in reference to the self facilitates recall for these stimuli, compared with other kinds of semantic processing. On the basis of a critical discussion of the relevant research, it is hypothesized that the superiority of self-reference is due to some specific features of semantic orienting tasks that serve as control groups for self-referent encoding. This hypothesis is tested in three experiments demonstrating that, when changing certain features of these semantic orienting tasks, the self-reference-effect (SRE) is no longer obtained. In Experiment 3, the statistical difficulties are addressed that arise when not rejecting the null-hypothesis. Furthermore, several implications of schema-oriented explanations of the SRE are tested. Several dependent measures provide evidence in support of the motion that a self-schema is activated during encoding and retrieval of self-relevant material. However, results show that self-referent processing — in contrast to the most general claim of the relevant literature—does not lead to superior recollection.     

Symbolic distance and congruity effects for paired-comparisons judgments of degree of self-reference

Two experiments are reported which speak to the properties of the process of self-reference. The first demonstrated a “symbolic distance effect” for self-reference. An inverse linear relation was found between item difference on a self-referent continuum and the time required to judge which of a pair of adjectives best described the respondent. The second experiment failed to demonstrate a “congruity effect” in a situation where subjects decided which of a pair of adjectives BEST or LEAST described them. This failure was interpreted as support for the proposition that the self functions as an immovable, rigid, and fixed reference point during the processing of personal information. Discussion focused upon how this fixed reference point property helps understand some other research findings.     

The movement-induced self-reference effect: enhancing memorability through movement toward the self

Much evidence suggests that bodily actions affect cognitive states. In particular, pulling owned objects toward the self improves memory for those objects compared to memory for objects pushed away from the self. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of incidental joystick movement on static stimuli, hypothesizing that using the physical self (rather than a computer monitor) as a reference point would enhance memory for items categorized via a toward-the-self action but not toward-the-computer-monitor action. Experiment 3 examined whether movement toward an external representation of self, one’s cellular phone, would enhance memory compared to the same movement toward an unfamiliar phone. Recognition memory was enhanced for both words and pictures evaluated during movements toward a representation of the self, regardless of whether the representation was a physical self or a disembodied self. Furthermore, movement toward the self enhanced memory, rather than movement away from the self depressing memory. These results suggest that self-referential processing can be induced by an approach motor action and impact episodic memory regardless of intention to learn, stimulus type, or motion of the stimuli. They also suggest that self-referential memory advantage can be disembodied.     

The influence of emotional meaning on the recall of words processed for form or self-reference

Summary How much does the recall of affectively positive, negative, and neutral words that differ in their emotional impact depend on the conceptual processing of these words? To answer this question one group of subjects were requested to rate the pronounceability of these words (formal orienting task), but were later tested for recall. Subsequently, they were asked to judge the intensity of the emotions aroused by the words. Another group of subjects received the latter, self-related task prior to the first exposure to the words. In both conditions the highly affect-arousing words were better recalled than the less emotional words. The affectively positive words were particularly well recalled, but only by those subjects involved in the formal orienting task. It is concluded that words are evaluated for their emotional content at an early stage of information processing as defined by Craik and Lockhart (1972).Extended version of an earlier paper delivered at the 34. Kongreß der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie in Vienna, 1984