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. 2025 Oct;32(5):2104-2113.
doi: 10.3758/s13423-025-02674-w. Epub 2025 Mar 19.

Self-reference promotes vocabulary learning in a foreign language

Shimon Pruss  1   2 , Avi Karni  1   2 , Anat Prior  3   4
Affiliations

Self-reference promotes vocabulary learning in a foreign language

Shimon Pruss et al. Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 Oct.

Erratum in

Abstract

Encoding information in reference to the self leads to improved memory, a phenomenon termed the self-reference effect. Learning vocabulary in a foreign language (L2) is a challenging memory task, because learning thousands of words is necessary to achieve listening and reading comprehension. The current study examined the efficacy of self-reference encoding for L2 vocabulary learning. In Experiment 1, native Hebrew speakers learned rare English words with a self-reference task and a control condition of translation repetition. In Experiment 2, participants learned with the same self-reference task and a control task of semantic processing. Across both experiments, memory was higher in the self-reference condition in both an immediate and a delayed test one week later. Thus, self-reference might be adopted as a learning tool in L2 vocabulary learning. Further, we demonstrate the contribution of self-reference to learning new information, going beyond previous demonstration of its positive impact on episodic encoding of known information.

Keywords: Encoding; L2; Memory; Self; Self-reference effect; Vocabulary.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflicts of interest: The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose. Ethics approval: The methodology for this study was approved by the Human Research Ethics committee of the University of Haifa (Ethics approval number: 226/21). Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study, including consent for their anonymized data to be included in scientific publications.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Memory rate by learning condition, in Experiment 1 (Panel 1), and Experiment 2 (Panel B). Error bars represent the standard error of the mean (SEM)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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