Impact of Encoding Strategy on Stimulus Type on Autobiographical and Semantic Memory
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Issued Date: 19th June 2026
Published Date:
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Author Affiliations:
Pranavi Gokavaram
Priya Dsouza
Sethu Lakshmi C V
Swagini Nakashe
Abstract:
The self-reference effect (SRE) and the picture superiority effect (PSE) are two well-established memory phenomena, yet their interplay and developmental expression in adolescence remain underexplored. The present study examined the independent effects of elaboration type (autobiographical vs. semantic) and stimulus type (picture vs. word) on recall and recognition memory in a sample of 151 adolescents aged 13 to 16 years. A within-subjects design was employed in which participants encoded items under all four combinations of elaboration and material type. Due to the structure of the available data, which provided only marginal totals, a series of planned paired-samples t-tests with Holm–Bonferroni correction was conducted to evaluate five directional hypotheses. Results revealed that autobiographical elaboration produced significantly higher recall (d = 0.32) and recognition (d = 0.33) than semantic elaboration. Pictures were recalled significantly better than words (d = 1.05), but recognition of pictures and words did not differ (d = 0.05). Overall recognition performance substantially exceeded recall (d = 2.69). This is consistent with contemporary studies that these two forms of memory utilise overlapping neural networks while also existing along a continuum of specificity and context (Irish & Piguet, 2013; Sheldon et al., 2019; Tanguay et al., 2023; Rubin, 2021), autobiographical elaboration has a modest but reliable mnemonic advantage across both retrieval types. These findings further support the distinctiveness account of the PSE and dual-process theories of retrieval, demonstrating that the PSE is robust in recall but not in recognition, whereas the SRE confers a modest advantage across both retrieval modes. The study contributes data on these phenomena in an adolescent sample and highlights the need for future research examining the interaction between self-referential elaboration and stimulus distinctiveness.
Keywords:
Autobiographical memory · Semantic memory · Self-reference effect · Picture superiority effect · Recall · Recognition · Adolescence
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