Working memory capacity and self-cues: consistent benefits in children and adults

From attentional prioritization to enhanced memory, self-cues trigger a variety of effects within human cognition. Recent work suggests that self-reference may also enhance working memory, possibly via attentional prioritization. However, there is no direct evidence that self-cues enhance working memory capacity, or that such boosts covary with individuals' attentional function. Here, we provide the first direct evidence of enhanced working memory capacity for self-referential cues, independent of attentional processing. We adapted a verbal working memory complex span to create a ‘Self’ condition (featuring the participant's own name), ‘Other’ condition (featuring a non-self-name), and Control condition (with no name), in 7–9-year-old children (Exp.1, N = 71) and adults (Exp.2, N = 52). In both experiments, the Self condition elicited significantly higher spans than the other conditions (Exp 1: p < .001, ηp2 = .32; Exp 2: p < .001, ηp2 = .25), but this increase in capacity was unrelated to measures of attentional processing or backward digit span. Moreover, equivalent boosts were observed in children and adults, despite adults' significantly higher underlying capacity. We propose a chunking interpretation based on enhanced binding of self-associated items, directly benefiting individual's working memory capacity regardless of their current attentional competence or ‘baseline’ capacity.