DESCRIBING MEMORIES- THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SEMANTICS AND THE SELF-CONCEPT

This study focused on the effects of semantic autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval on one’s self-concept. Participants recalled and wrote about up to four life chapters (specific time periods during their life) or recalled and wrote about up to four general knowledge (GK) stories (i.e. non personal information) in the form of fairy tales. The fluency and accessibility of the self-concept was measured using the “I Am” assessment (Charlesworth, 2015), and was operationalized as three different identity statements: personality traits, physical traits, and identity roles. Participants were initially given one minute to generate as many “I Am” statements as possible (i.e., Fluency portion), and were then given as much time as needed to generate all 20 statements (i.e., Accessibility portion). Participants then used a Likert scale to rate the information they recalled out of five points. In the Fluency portion, the control (fairy tale) group, who recalled GK, generated significantly more personality traits relative to the experimental (life-chapter) group, who recalled semantic AMs. During the Accessibility portion, the life chapter group generated significantly more identity roles relative to the fairy tale group. There were also differences in the total number of personality traits generated for the fairy tale group, relative to the life chapter group, however, this group difference was only marginally significant