Creating a network of importance: The particular effects of self-relevance on stimulus processing

Abstract

Several factors guide our attention and the way we process our surroundings. In that regard, there is an ongoing debate about the way we are influenced by stimuli that have a particular self-relevance for us. Recent findings suggest that self-relevance does not always capture our attention automatically. Instead, an interpretation of the literature might be that self-relevance serves as an associative advantage facilitating the integration of relevant stimuli into the self-concept. We compared the effect of self-relevant stimuli with the effect of negative stimuli in three tasks measuring different aspects of cognitive processing. We found a first dissociation suggesting that negative valence attracts attention while self-relevance does not, a second dissociation suggesting that self-relevance influences stimulus processing beyond attention-grabbing mechanisms and in the form of an “associative glue,” while negative valence does not, and, last but not least, a third dissociation suggesting that self-relevance influences stimulus processing at a later stage than negative valence does.

The Self-Prioritization Effect: Self-referential processing in movement highlights modulation at multiple stages

“…Across a diverse range of experimental tasks, it has been demonstrated that processing stimuli associated with the self can modulate attention (Sui et al, 2009), perception (Golubickis et al, 2017;Sui et al, 2012), memory (Rogers et al, 1977;Turk et al, 2008), and decision-making (Liu et al, 2016). Studies using a perceptual-matching task to examine the Self-Prioritization Effect (SPE; Sui et al, 2012) have demonstrated that effects of self-relevance can be dissociated (at least in part) from those of other response-facilitating factors, such as stimulus familiarity (Sui et al, 2012;Woźniak & Knoblich, 2019), stimulus reward value (e.g., Qian et al, 2019;Yankouskaya et al, 2017), emotional valence (Schäfer et al, 2020;Stolte et al, 2015), and semantic elaboration . Distinct neural circuitry has also been demonstrated to underpin the self-advantage in the matching task Yankouskaya et al, 2017).…”

Self-Reference Effect Induced by Self-Cues Presented During Retrieval

“…However, consistent with the present findings, previous studies have found that geometric shapes could be expanded to the self by tagging a neutral shape with a self-relevant label and could obtain behavioral self-bias (Sui et al, 2012 , 2013 ). More importantly, the effect has meanwhile been replicated by other laboratories (Stein et al, 2016 ; Wozniak et al, 2018 ; Schäfer et al, 2020 ), in which the effects have been reasonably interpreted by using the BRAC framework (Schäfer et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Recently, BRAC has been applied to interpret the effects on self-relevance. In research examining the effects of self-reference on stimulus processing, Schäfer et al ( 2020 ) have argued that once stimuli are perceived as being relevant for our self, self-relevance serves to create a network of those contents and elements by binding them together, and the self would be represented by bindings of particular features. In the present study, it is a sentence “Mike uses blue AGSs and Joe uses red AGSs” that binds the features, such as the color and shapes of AGSs to the self or another person.…”

“…In the present study, it is a sentence “Mike uses blue AGSs and Joe uses red AGSs” that binds the features, such as the color and shapes of AGSs to the self or another person. Schäfer et al ( 2020 ) also have argued that each feature can be weighted according to the current context and then feature weights influence stimulus processing. In the present study, different weights were given to self- vs. other-relevant features or features in CIE vs. CIR.…”

When self‐prioritization crosses the senses: Crossmodal self‐prioritization demonstrated between vision and touch

“…Additionally, a recent study has suggested that the SPE is located at a later, post‐perceptual stage of information processing (Janczyk, Humphreys, & Sui, 2019). Other studies have, though, challenged the perceptual account in favour of a memory advantage (Reuther & Chakravarthi, 2017) or else a learning (Fuentes, Sui, Estévez, & Humphreys, 2016) or association advantage (Schäfer, Wentura, & Frings, 2020; Sui & Humphreys, 2015) due to the self‐relevance of the stimuli instead.…”