Personal reminders: Self-generated reminders boost memory more than normatively related ones

Abstract

People generate reminders in a variety of ways (e.g. putting items in special places or creating to-do lists) to support their memories. Successful remindings can result in retroactive facilitation of earlier information; in contrast, failures to remind can produce interference between memory for related information. Here, we compared the efficacy of different kinds of reminders, including participant’s self-generated reminders, reminders created by prior participants, and normatively associated reminders. Self-generated reminders boosted memory for the earlier target words more than normatively associated reminders in recall tests. Reminders generated by others enhanced memory as much as self-generated reminders when we controlled output order during recall. The results suggest that self-generated reminders boost memory for earlier studied information because they distinctly point towards the target information.