Many techniques to encourage student involvement in psychology courses have had positive effects. Polyson (1983) asked students to use several personality theories to analyze the behavior of their favorite TV character. Lawson (1994) had students search the popular media for examples of operant and classical conditioning. Junn (1989) had students write personal letters to their future child on his or her 18th birthday, describing the goals they intended their parenting to achieve. Charlesworth and Slate (1986) had students write letters to their future children about to enter puberty, describing the physical and psychological changes they were about to experience. McAdam (1987) used log-based written assignments, asking students to choose several personal experiences during the semester, then try to explain them with principles from their textbook. In all of these cases, students reported they learned more and understood the material better following the assignments, though only Lawson (1994) looked to see if performance on exams improved.

The self-reference effect (Symons & Johnson, 1997) occurs when individuals show better recall of new material that relates to their self-concept than for new but unrelated material. Memories of people actually encountered and events directly experienced are much more vivid than is recall of things merely read about or heard about from others.

One explanation for this is that individuals simply know more about themselves than about anything else, and thus have a more elaborate cognitive framework around which to organize personal experiences (Lord, 1980). This more interconnected and differentiated framework presumably permits deeper processing of information. Memories of life experiences, thoughts, and feelings make up an important part of what individuals know, and memory increases in size and complexity with age.