Graduation Year

2018

Date of Submission

4-2018

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

Reader 1

Sharda Umanath

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2018 Austin L Gosch

Abstract

Previous research has shown that individuals who are inconsistently handed (IH) outperform consistently handed (IH) individuals on episodic and spatial memory tasks as well as many others. This current study examines whether handedness is related to a person’s ability to recall autobiographical memories (AM) - episodic memories about oneself. Participants were first asked to recall seven memories that will be cued by seven cue words: earth, friend, dream, power, love, trouble, and opinion. They later expanded on those memories to include more detail, then self-rated how well they were able to remember them on five aspects of AM (spatial layout, content, reliving, vividness, and belief) using a modified version of the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire (AMQ). Ninety-seven participants (44.3% female, Age: 19 to 69 years) were included in the data analysis. All ninety-seven were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk system and were financially compensated for their time. Results showed no main effect of handedness on AM in regards to all five AM aspects tested, meaning IH’s did not outperform CH’s in regards to autobiographical memory recall.

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