Is visual attention automatically attracted by one’s own name?

Bundesen, Claus; Kyllingsbæk, Søren; Houmann, Kristján Jul; Jensen, Rune Møller

doi:10.3758/bf03206017

Cited by 60 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 28 publications

(14 reference statements)

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“…Even though our findings showing no prioritization of the own face is inconsistent with some studies (Mack & Rock, 1998;Wolford & Morrison, 1980;Brédart et al, 2006;Tong & Nakayama, 1999), other have reported similar findings showing that one's own name (Bundesen et al, 1997;Harris et al, 2004) or the self-face (Laarni et al, 2000) does not summon attention. Therefore, these discrepancies between previous findings as well as the present interference effect could be explained by a difficulty to disengage attention from selfreferential/highly familiar stimuli once they are attended, rather than by an attentional prioritization.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…Our data thus seem to support this view and indicate that some "self-effects"² found previously might also be due to a difficulty to disengage attention rather than to a prioritized processing of self-referential stimuli. Indeed, those effects have been found when self-referential stimuli that were irrelevant to the ongoing task were located within the focus of attention (Gronau et al, 2003;Wolford & Morrison, 1980) but not when located outside the focus of attention (Bundesen et al, 1997;Gronau et al, 2003;Laarni et al, 2000), suggesting that they do not summon attention. In other words, discrepancies between previous studies could be explained in terms of attentional disengagement rather than in terms of the ability to attract attention automatically.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to the authors, their results argue in favour of a robust name effect (but see e.g. Bundesen, Kyllingsbaek, Houmann, & Jensen, 1997). However, given the fact that the to-be-ignored stimuli were presented at fixation, they were located within the focus of attention and were presumably attended, preventing any strong conclusion in favour of a late selection theory of attention.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…However, Bundesen et al (1997) showed that one's own name does not automatically attract attention. In their experiment two white-coloured (to-be-ignored distractors) and two redcoloured (to-be-reported targets) names were presented.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By contrast, when self-referential stimuli were presented outside the focus of attention, they produced specific effects when their processing was somehow related with the task at hand (see e.g., Brédart et al, 2006;Gronau et al, 2003-Experiment 3) but they generally failed to elicit specific performance in conditions that rendered their processing completely irrelevant (see e.g. Bundesen et al, 1997;Gronau et al, 2003-Experiment 2;Laarni et al, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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You do not find your own face faster; you just look at it longer

et al. 2009

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Previous studies investigating the ability of high priority stimuli to grab attention reached contradictory outcomes. The present study used eye tracking to examine the effect of the presence of the self-face among other faces in a visual search task in which the face identity was task-irrelevant. We assessed whether the self-face (1) received prioritized selection (2) caused a difficulty to disengage attention, and (3) whether its status as target or distractor had a differential effect. We included another highly familiar face to control whether possible effects were self-face specific or could be explained by high familiarity. We found that the self-face interfered with the search task. This was not due to a prioritized processing but rather to a difficulty to disengage attention. Crucially, this effect seemed due to the self-face's familiarity, as similar results were obtained with the other familiar face, and was modulated by the status of the face since it was stronger for targets than for distractors.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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You do not find your own face faster; you just look at it longer

et al. 2009

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Visual Search

Wolfe

2018

Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience

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In visual search tasks, observers typically look for one or more target items among distracting items. Visual search lies at an important intersection between vision and attention. It is impossible to fully process everything in the visual scene at once. Most acts of visual object recognition require that resources be directed to one (or a very few) items. Visual selective attention is used to restrict processing for this purpose. Explaining visual search behavior involves explaining how visual selective attention is deployed to get this done. This chapter reviews why we search, how search experiments have been conducted in the lab, and what the resulting data can (and cannot) tell us. Attention is guided by a limited set of stimulus attributes. The candidates for these attributes are discussed here. The chapter also considers how attention is guided by scene structure and the interaction of attentional mechanisms with long‐term and working memory.

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I, me, mine: Automatic attentional capture by self‐related stimuli

Alexopoulos

Michelet

Ric

et al. 2012

Euro J Social Psych

128

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Drawing on decades of research suggesting an attentional advantage for self‐related information, researchers generally assume that self‐related stimuli automatically capture attention. However, a literature review reveals that this claim has not been systematically examined. We aimed to fill in this dearth of evidence. Following a feature‐based account of automaticity, we set up four experiments in which participants were asked to respond to a target preceded by a cue, which was self‐related or not. In Experiment 1, larger cuing effects (faster reaction times to valid versus invalid trials) were found with a participant's own name compared with someone else's name. In Experiment 2, we replicated these results with unconscious cues. Experiment 3 suggested that these effects are not likely driven by familiarity. In Experiment 4, participants experienced greater difficulties from having their attention being captured by their own compared with someone else's name. We conclude that attentional capture by self‐related stimuli is automatic in the sense that it is unintentional, unconscious, and uncontrolled. Implications for self‐regulation and intergroup relations are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Is visual attention automatically attracted by one’s own name?

Cited by 60 publications

References 28 publications

You do not find your own face faster; you just look at it longer

You do not find your own face faster; you just look at it longer

Visual Search

I, me, mine: Automatic attentional capture by self‐related stimuli

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