EFFECTS OF SELF-REFERENCE AND AFFECTIVE V ALUE OF THE LEARNING-MATERIAL ON MEMORY PERFORMANCE

It is assumed that high affective value and high self-reference of lea rning material help to improve memory performance as these factors all ow better memory consolidation (activation hypothesis) or better integ ration of the new material into existing knowledge structures (extent- of-processing hypothesis). To test this assumption, 60 subjects were s hown 16 short advertising films characterized by low vs. high affectiv e value and low vs. high self-reference. Both factors were varied with in subjects. After the films had each been presented twice, subjects h ad to recall the product names and answer two questions to each film. Results showed for both dependent variables that films with high affec tive values were better remembered than films with low affective value s. The same held true - though to a lower extent - with respect to sel f-reference. According to the expected linear trend, performance was b est for material scoring high on affective value as well as on self-re ference, while it was worst for material scoring low on both factors.