This article presents and discusses transcripts of some 270 explanations subjects provided subsequently for recognition memory decisions that had been associated with remember, know, or guess responses at the time the recognition decisions were made. Only transcripts for remember responses included reports of recollective experiences, which seemed mostly to reflect either effortful elaborative encoding or involuntary reminding at study, especially in relation to the self. Transcripts for know responses included claims of just knowing, and of feelings of familiarity. These transcripts (...) indicated that subjects were often quite confident of the accuracy of their decisions, compared with those for guess responses. Transcripts for decisions associated with guess responses also expressed feelings of familiarity but additionally revealed various strategies and inferences that did not directly reflect memory for studied items. The article concludes with a historical and theoretical overview of some interpretations of the states of awareness measured by these responses. (shrink)

Processing information in the context of personal survival scenarios elicits a memory advantage, relative to other rich encoding conditions such as self-referencing. However, previous research is unable to distinguish between the influence of survival and self-reference because personal survival is a self-referent encoding context. To resolve this issue, participants in the current study processed items in the context of their own survival and a familiar other person’s survival, as well as in a semantic context. Recognition memory for the items revealed (...) that personal survival elicited a memory advantage relative to semantic encoding, whereas other-survival did not. These findings reinforce suggestions that the survival effect is closely tied with self-referential encoding, ensuring that fitness information of potential importance to self is successfully retained in memory. (shrink)

The neuropeptide oxytocin has been suggested to facilitate social cognition and behavior. Therefore, published literature mainly focuses on the study of OT in a social context or in relation to others. But how we think, act and feel in social situations might strongly depend on our own state of being – the self. Thus, the present three studies examine the effects of OT on self-related processing and cognition. The first study explores the idea that OT might decrease self-related information processing, (...) even when individuals are specifically exposed to being self-aware. We could show that public self-awareness was increased when participants were placed in front of a mirror. Moreover, in the placebo group, lower scores in self-esteem were associated with increased self-awareness. This was not the case in the OT group in which self-esteem was unrelated to self-awareness. The results suggest that OT might function as a buffer against the negative consequences of enhanced self-related processing. The second study of this dissertation explores OT’s effects on self-related processing in a more physiological approach. Participants were to conduct a heartbeat perception task in front of a mirror and we hypothesized OT to inhibit interoceptive awareness. Usually, people become more attuned to bodily responses in front of a mirror due to increased self-awareness. In line with the concept of de-individuation under OT, we could show that heartbeat accuracy, and thus interoceptive accuracy, was increased among participants under placebo who were placed in front of the mirror, but no such effect occurred after treatment with OT. The third study provides empirical evidence testing OT’s effect on situational self-awareness when attentional focus is shifted, either to external sensory perception or explicit self-related cognition, using a categorization vs. introspection task. The results suggest that situational self-awareness was reduced after OT treatment compared to placebo, when participants had previously been instructed to introspect about their feelings. In sum, all findings support the idea of OT being significantly involved in self-related processing and cognition by enhancing de-individuation. (shrink)