A comparison of self-bias measures across cognitive domains

Abstract

Background: The ‘self-bias’ – i.e., the human proneness to preferentially process self-relevant stimuli – is thought to be important for both self-related and social processing. Previous research operationalized the self-bias using different paradigms, assessing the size of the self-bias within a single cognitive domain. Recent studies suggested a reduced self-bias in autism, yet findings are inconsistent. Therefore, the primary goal of the current study was to investigate whether self-biases found across cognitive domains (i.e., perception, memory, attention) are related or independent. The secondary goal was to explore the relationship between these self-biases and the extent of autistic traits in a neurotypical sample.Methods: In an online procedure, 99 Dutch-speaking adults performed three self-processing tasks in counterbalanced order – i.e., the shape-label matching task (perception), the trait adjectives task (memory) and the visual search task (attention) – and completed two self-report measures of ASD symptomatology, i.e., AQ-10 and SRS-A. To control for level of familiarity, self-, close other- and famous other-relevant stimuli were included in each task. Repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted for each task, and both frequentist as well as Bayesian analyses were applied to investigate the correlational patterns between self-bias measures.Results: We observed significant correlations of the self-bias magnitude between memory and attention, as well as attention and perception. However, Bayesian analysis provided only weak support for the latter association. Further, the size of the self-bias was not significantly related across memory and perception. For neither of the tasks, a significant correlation between autistic traits and the self-bias magnitude was found, with Bayesian analyses strongly favoring the null hypothesis.Conclusions: In contrast with the view of a ‘unidimensional’ self-bias, our findings provide evidence for a heterogeneous and multifaceted self consisting of a variety of related and unrelated aspects. None of the self-bias indices were found to relate to autistic traits in our neurotypical sample.

Depersonalization affects self-prioritization of bodily, but not abstract self-related information.

“…Overall, our results support previous findings that different measures of self-related processing tend not to be strongly related to each other (Amodeo et al, 2021;Nijhof et al, 2020;Woźniak & Hohwy, 2020). Moreover, our results show that even using different types of stimuli (bodily stimuli or abstract stimuli) in the same task targeting the same cognitive process (top-down preparatory activity) can lead to different patterns of results depending on which aspect of the self they target.…”

“…Furthermore, it has been recently demonstrated that establishing arbitrary associations between neutral stimuli and the self leads to processing advantages with respect to these stimuli, reflected by increases in accuracy and decreases in reaction times (Caughey et al, 2020;Lee et al, 2021;Sui et al, 2012;Sui et al, 2009;Sui et al, 2013;Woźniak & Knoblich, 2019;Woźniak & Knoblich, 2021). Importantly, recent studies have found that diverse self-related effects (such as those listed above) do not necessarily correlate with each other, suggesting that different cognitive processes may be underpinning each of them (Amodeo et al, 2021;Nijhof et al, 2020;Woźniak & Hohwy, 2020). If self-related processing does engage multiple distinct cognitive processes, then this raises the question which, if any, of these processes may be affected in people experiencing DP -and specifically, whether they are limited to processes of body-related information or affect self-related information in general.…”