This study focused on the effects of semantic autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval on one’s
self-concept. Participants recalled and wrote about up to four life chapters (specific time periods
during their life) or recalled and wrote about up to four general knowledge (GK) stories (i.e. non
personal information) in the form of fairy tales. The fluency and accessibility of the self-concept
was measured using the “I Am” assessment (Charlesworth, 2015), and was operationalized as
three different identity statements: personality traits, physical traits, and identity roles.
Participants were initially given one minute to generate as many “I Am” statements as possible
(i.e., Fluency portion), and were then given as much time as needed to generate all 20 statements
(i.e., Accessibility portion). Participants then used a Likert scale to rate the information they
recalled out of five points. In the Fluency portion, the control (fairy tale) group, who recalled
GK, generated significantly more personality traits relative to the experimental (life-chapter)
group, who recalled semantic AMs. During the Accessibility portion, the life chapter group
generated significantly more identity roles relative to the fairy tale group. There were also
differences in the total number of personality traits generated for the fairy tale group, relative to
the life chapter group, however, this group difference was only marginally significant
