Automatic Prioritization of Self-Referential Stimuli in Working Memory

Abstract

People preferentially attend to external stimuli that are related to themselves compared with others. Whether a similar self-reference bias applies to internal representations, such as those maintained in working memory (WM), is presently unknown. We tested this possibility in four experiments, in which participants were first trained to associate social labels (self, friend, stranger) with arbitrary colors and then performed a delayed match-to-sample spatial WM task on color locations. Participants consistently responded fastest to WM probes at locations of self-associated colors (Experiments 1–4). This self-bias was driven not by differential exogenous attention during encoding or retrieval (Experiments 1 and 2) but by internal attentional prioritization of self-related representations during WM maintenance (Experiment 3). Moreover, self-prioritization in WM was nonstrategic, as this bias persisted even under conditions in which it hurt WM performance. These findings document an automatic prioritization of self-referential items in WM, which may form the basis of some egocentric biases in decision making.

Self-Referential Processing Can Modulate Visual Spatial Attention Deficits in Children With Dyslexia

“…Firstly, we conducted a replicate experiment to ensure the subjects responded faster under self-associative condition, as compared to other association condition. The result of the present study was consistent with previous research and demonstrated a self-association advantage effect on simple perceptual matching tasks (Sui et al, 2012; Yin et al, 2019). These results suggested that the participants established a temporary connection between label matching and social significance in the perceptual matching task.…”

“…As such, the residual experimental data from 22 subjects were analyzed (see Table 1). On the basis of prior research (Yin et al, 2019), only correct responses with RTs were analyzed with a mixed ANOVA in which the within-subject factor was reference mode (self-reference vs. other-reference) and the between-subject factor was group (typically developing reader vs. dyslexia). A significant main effect was found for reference mode F (1, 16) = 14.09, p < 0.05, η 2 = 0.47, the correct responses with RTs were faster in the self-reference matching condition than other-reference matching condition.…”

“…Mean response time are plotted as a function of different shape-label matching tasks for each of the participants. The data were collected using standard methods for the lab (Sui et al, 2012; Yin et al, 2019). Error bars denote 1SEM calculated across subjects for each condition.…”

Overlap in processing advantages for minimal ingroups and the self

“…A large prioritisation effect was found in response time, accuracy and sensitivity scores for self shapes compared to those of friend and stranger, and for friend compared to stranger shapes. These effects have been robustly replicated 19 – 24 and can operate even when associations are not instructed but are learnt over time 25 . Further, self-prioritisation exists even when familiarity is removed from all stimuli, such as when social labels were replaced with unfamiliar abstract symbols associated to the words (you, friend, stranger) before the experiment 26 .…”

Self-Construal Priming Modulates Ensemble Perception of Multiple-Face Identities

“…We supposed more social information and heterogeneity carried by multiple faces might be responsible for this discrepancy. To test this idea, future studies could first train participants to associate social information (e.g., self vs. other) with low-level features (e.g., Yin et al., 2019), and then explore the effect of self-construal on ensemble perception. Additionally, as suggested by Sama (2017), the different neural processing pathways recruited by high-level vs. low-level features might also partially explain their discrepant ensemble coding mechanisms, which require further study.…”