Featured Topic: Memory

Featured Topic: Memory

Memory may fade, but publishing your research on this topic means it will be remembered for years to come! Since SBP’s earliest days, we have featured articles on memory and recall, with Knight and Harris (1993) reporting on the adaptability of memory processes in recalling scripts and Sagi (1984) examining in our sister publication, Psychology and Human Development: An international journal, how tasks with a high level of cognitive complexity, including memory tasks, influence language learning.

Going beyond the classic categories of short- and long-term memory, a number of our authors have conducted specialized research on particular types of memory. O’Banion and Arkowitz (1977) investigated the effect of women’s social anxiety on their recall ability, and observed that those with higher levels of social anxiety showed a selective ability to remember negative information about themselves, though there was no significant difference between groups with high and low anxiety in terms of ability to recall positive self-referential information.

In another examination of autobiographical memory Yang et al. (2020) applied temporal self-appraisal theory and found that participants tended to feel farther away from negative (vs. positive) past experiences, and that this effect was sustained regardless of whether the focal experiences had happened 3 months or 3 years ago. Meanwhile, Yang and Liu (2022) developed the Emotional Autobiographical Memory Test as a measure of emotional autobiographical memory impairment in patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.

Lim et al. (2018) examined explicit and implicit memory types, and reported that visual attention significantly influenced explicit but not implicit memory of in-game advertising shown in a video clip of a soccer match. Further, they observed that visual attention had an indirect impact on explicit memory through the mediators of pleasure and arousal experienced while watching the game clip. In a similar setting, Hsu et al. (2007) investigated consumers’ attitude toward television and radio advertising, and found that their respondents valued information that was entertaining, attractive, had strong product images, and assisted memory recall.

Taking a novel approach by using VOSviewer software, Lu et al. (2023) conducted a bibliometric analysis to explore the literature on working memory and creativity, and observed a rapid linear growth trend in studies published in this field. This indicates that the link between these variables is a current area of intense interest, and the authors proposed several ways to facilitate this research on the basis of their analysis.

Interested in finding out more about the behavioral and social psychology perspective on how memory operates? Our journal archive contains dozens of articles on this and other, related subjects over our five decades of publication. Sign up for a personal subscription to SBP to gain access to over 4,100 papers spanning the fields of social, behavioral, and developmental psychology.

Episodic refabrication of biologically significant information in script recall – Mike Knight and Howard Harris, 1993, 21(1), 75–84.

Grammatical gender, symbolic meaning, and gender concept: Recall, classification, and preference tests – Abraham Sagi, 1984, Psychology and Human Development: an international journal, 1(1), 1–12.

Social anxiety and selective memory for affective information about the self – Katy O’Banion and Hal Arkowitz, 1977, 5(2), 321–328.

Temporal self-appraisal in a Chinese context: Distancing autobiographical memory following self-uncertainty salience – Qing Yang, Oscar Ybarra, Kees van den Bos, Yufang Zhao, Lili Guan, and Xiting Huang, 2020, 48(2), Article e8632.

Emotional autobiographical memory impairment features in three mental disorders – Zhiwei Yang and Xufeng Liu, 2022, 50(2), Article e10915.

Sponsorship information reception and processing: Explicit and implicit memory of in-game advertising – Choong Hoon Lim, Youngjin Hur, and Song Mi Song, 2018, 46(6), 935–952.

Who is watching TV? Who is listening to radio? Consumer perceptions of TV and radio advertising information – Jane Lu Hsu, Shuen-An Yang, and Li-Chang Su, 2007, 35(2), 157–168.

Working memory and creativity: A bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer – Peng Lu, Ruolin Zhang, and Dandan Tong, 2023, 51(6), Article e12367.