Self-relevance enhances the benefits of attention on perception

Macrae, C. Neil; Visokomogilski, Aleksandar; Golubickis, Marius; Sahraie, Arash

doi:10.1080/13506285.2018.1498421

Cited by 49 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Future studies should determine whether these are the only factors contributing to the effect, and what their exact underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms might be. In a wider perspective, our results provide a call to take into consideration the difference between top-down and bottom-up processing also in different experimental paradigms investigating self-prioritizaton [26,34,62,63,72,87,88].…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 80%

“…However, two recent studies have provided experimental evidence suggesting that self-prioritization affects not perceptual, but cognitive (e.g. decision making) [34] and motor stages of processing [26] (but see [19,63] for evidence of modulation of perception). These studies are relevant, because top-down attention is usually regarded as affecting perception, rather than decision making or motor response.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

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Stranger to my face: Top-down and bottom-up effects underlying prioritization of images of one’s face

Woźniak¹,

Hohwy²

2020

PLoS ONE

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Recent studies suggest that we rapidly and effortlessly associate neutral information with the self, leading to subsequent prioritization of this information in perception. However, the exact underlying processes behind these effects are not fully known. Here, we focus specifically on top-down and bottom-up processes involved in self-prioritization, and report results from three experiments involving face detection, using a sequential match-non-match task. Across the three experiments we asked participants to associate an unfamiliar face with the self (Experiment 1), to associate one's face with a stranger's name (Experiment 2), and to establish both associations simultaneously (Experiment 3). We found that while participants showed evidence of bottom-up prioritization of their real faces, they did not show such an effect for self-associated strangers' faces. However, the participants showed a robust selfrelated top-down effect; when presented with a self-related cue, they were later faster at classifying both subsequent correct and incorrect targets. Together, our results suggest that self-prioritization is underpinned by distinct top-down and bottom-up processes. We discuss our findings in the context of the proposal that the self acts as an "integrative glue", and suggest an interpretation of our results within the framework of predictive coding.

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Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Stranger to my face: Top-down and bottom-up effects underlying prioritization of images of one’s face

Woźniak¹,

Hohwy²

2020

PLoS ONE

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“…Using a perceptual-matching task, researchers have shown that participants make faster and less errant responses to stimuli related to the self than other persons. Critically, this effect has been replicated on numerous occasions, with self-prioritization extending to a wide range of stimuli, including: geometric shapes (Desebrock, Sui, & Spence, 2018;Enock, Sui, Hewstone, & Humphreys, 2018;Golubickis et al, 2017;Schäfer, Frings, & Wentura, 2016;Schäfer, Wentura, & Frings, 2017;Schäfer, Wesslein, Spence, Wenura, & Frings, 2016;Sui et al, 2012Sui et al, , 2013Sui et al, , 2014, badges of sports teams (Moradi, Sui, Hewstone, & Humphreys, 2015), objects (Schäfer, Wentura, & Frings, 2015), computer-generated avatars (Mattan, Quinn, Apperly, Sui, & Rothshtein, 2015), Gabor patches (Macrae, Visokomogilski, Golubickis, & Sahraie, 2018;Stein et al, 2016), lines (Siebold et al, 2015), and faces (Payne, Tsakiris, & Maister, 2017). In addition, self-prioritization has been reported across various sensory modalities (Frings & Wentura, 2014;Schäfer et al, 2015Schäfer et al, , 2016b.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Self-prioritization during stimulus processing is not obligatory

Caughey

Falbén

Tsamadi

et al. 2020

Psychological Research

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An emerging literature has suggested that self-relevance automatically enhances stimulus processing (i.e., the self-prioritization effect). Specifically, during shape-label matching tasks, geometric shapes associated with the self are identified more rapidly than comparable stimuli paired with other targets (e.g., friend, stranger). Replicating and extending work that challenges the putative automaticity of this effect, here we hypothesized that self-relevance facilitates stimulus processing only when task sets draw attention to previously formed shape-label associations in memory. The results of a shape-classification task confirmed this prediction. Compared to shapes associated with a friend, those paired with the self were classified more rapidly when participants were required to report who the stimulus denoted (i.e., self or friend). In contrast, self-relevance failed to facilitate performance when participants judged either what the shape was (i.e., triangle or square, diamond or circle) or where it was located on the screen (i.e., above or below fixation). These findings further elucidate the conditions under which self-relevance does-and does not-influence stimulus processing. A commonly reported finding in the psychological literature is that self-relevance facilitates stimulus processing. Compared to material associated with other people (e.g., friend, mother, celebrity), items linked with the self are easier to notice, evaluate, and remember (e.g.

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“…The self is a powerful social dimension that is able to shape many different human cognitive mechanisms (Sui & Gu, 2017). Recently, a strong and reliable "self-prioritization effect" has been observed when participants were asked to arbitrarily associate the self with a geometrical shape (Sui et al, 2012), a result then largely replicated and explored both at behavioural level (e.g., Frings, & Wentura, 2014;Fuentes, Sui, Estévez, & Humphreys, 2016;Janczyk, Humphreys, & Sui, in press;;Macrae, Visokomogilski, Golubickis, & Sahraie, 2018;Payne, Tsakiris, & Maister, 2017;Schäfer, Wentura, & Frings, 2015Schäfer, Wesslein, Spence, Wentura, & Frings, 2016;Sui, Yankouskaya, & Humphreys, 2015;Wade & Vickery, 2018;Yankouskaya, Bührle, Lugt, Stolte, & Sui, in press) and neural level (e.g., Sui, Rotshtein, & Humphreys, 2013; see also Cunningham & Turk, 2017, for a review).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Self-related shapes can hold the eyes

Dalmaso

Castelli

Galfano

2019

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Increasing evidence suggests that individuals are highly sensitive to self-related stimuli. Here, we report two experiments conducted to assess whether two schematic stimuli, arbitrarily associated with either the self or a stranger, can shape attention holding in an oculomotor task. In both experiments, participants first completed a manual matching task in which they were asked to associate the self and a stranger with two shapes (triangle vs. square). Then, in an oculomotor task, they were asked to perform a saccade from the centre of the screen towards a peripheral target while either the triangle or the square were centrally presented. In Experiment 1, saccades had to be performed on each trial—irrespective of the central shape—while in Experiment 2, saccades had to be performed only when the central shape was associated with either the self or the stranger, depending on block instruction. Participants were slower to initiate a saccade away from the central shape when this was associated with the self rather than with the stranger, but this pattern of results emerged only in Experiment 2. Overall, these data suggest that stimuli associated with the self through episodic learning can hold attention when the self/other distinction is a task-relevant dimension.

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Self-relevance enhances the benefits of attention on perception

Cited by 49 publications

References 21 publications

Stranger to my face: Top-down and bottom-up effects underlying prioritization of images of one’s face

Stranger to my face: Top-down and bottom-up effects underlying prioritization of images of one’s face

Self-prioritization during stimulus processing is not obligatory

Self-related shapes can hold the eyes

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