Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Cultural differences in the self-referencing memory effect and underlying neural mechanisms

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Ahhyun Seo¹ (ahhyun@utexas.edu), Iva Dujmic², Angela Gutchess², Audrey Duarte¹; ¹The University of Texas at Austin, ²Brandeis University

The self-reference effect, a boost in episodic memory when linking information to oneself rather than others or making semantic judgments, is a robust memory encoding strategy. However, the self-reference effect has been investigated almost exclusively in Non-Hispanic White participants from individualistic culture. This study investigates the effects of culture on self-referencing memory effects and underlying neural mechanisms in Non-Hispanic Whites (NHWs), and people with bicultural collectivistic and individualistic identities: Mexican Americans (MAs), and Chinese Americans (CAs). We also examined the emotional contents of self-referenced information in the two bicultural groups, focusing on how cultural differences between Latinos and East Asians in the expression and valuation of emotions influence memory. EEG was measured as participants encoded and retrieved positive and negative adjectives under self-referencing, close-other referencing, or semantic judgment conditions. We hypothesized that self-referencing memory and associated old/new ERP effects would be stronger in NHWs compared to two bicultural groups (MAs, CAs). Furthermore, we predicted that MAs would find more positive words self-relevant than CAs, reflecting cultural differences in the expression and valuation of emotions, which could lead to better memory for specific emotionally valenced adjectives. Preliminary data support our predictions, showing robust self-referencing memory and associated old/new ERP effects across groups, with cultural group differences in latency and magnitude. MAs also endorsed more positive words as self-referential than CAs. We will further explore how these differences in emotional valence endorsement influence memory performance across various emotional adjectives. This work aims to inform culturally tailored memory interventions for diverse populations.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic