Self-related objects increase alertness and orient attention through top-down saliency

Li, Biqin; Hu, W.; Hunt, Amelia R.

doi:10.3758/s13414-021-02429-4

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Despite lacking evidence for their direct comparability, both types of self-associations have been shown to enhance information processing across multiple hierarchical processing stages. That is, attaching self-relevance to external information facilitates the selection and integration of perceptual information (Macrae et al, 2017, 2018; Scheller & Sui, 2022b; Sui, Yankouskaya, et al, 2015; Sui & Humphreys, 2015b; Truong et al, 2017), enhances the linking of attention and decision-making (Constable, Welsh, et al, 2019; Hu et al, 2020; Humphreys & Sui, 2016; Li et al, 2022; Liu et al, 2016), and leads to a more efficient binding of information in memory (Conway, 2005; Cunningham et al, 2008; Leshikar et al, 2015; Rogers et al, 1977; Yin et al, 2019). For example, in a previous study using the stimulus-label matching task, Sui and colleagues (Sui et al, 2012, Experiment 4) manipulated the luminance contrast of abstract shape stimuli that have been associated with the self, a friend, and a stranger.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The power of the self: Anchoring information processing across contexts.

Scheller¹

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A stable self-representation has an intrinsically beneficial connotation for information processing: it allows the individual to flexibly adapt to different contexts, while prioritizing information that pertains to the own immediate survival. Indeed, many studies have shown how linking arbitrary information to physical or psychological aspects of the self leads to pervasive effects on our decision-making and even our perception. However, the evidence we have gained so far stems from isolated aspects of the self, and varying measures across studies and different levels of processing make results difficult to compare. The present study demonstrates that associating arbitrary information with the self rapidly leads to faster and more efficient processing of information, with stable performance benefits across different tasks (matching and categorization task) and stimulus domains. Focusing on specific processing levels, the findings first provide evidence regarding the involvement of self-relatedness in perception. Here, contrast processing interacted with self-relatedness, but only when complex stimuli were used. Second, they show that self-prioritization is flexible to decisional modulations, with processing benefits being adjusted to different social contexts. Third, the present data provides evidence that performance benefits toward newly self-associated, abstract information are equivalent to those resulting from long-term established self-associations with personally owned objects. The results highlight mechanistic differences between the prioritization of information linked to the self and information linked to close others. Overall, the present findings suggest that the self acts as a stable anchor in information processing, allowing us to filter information by its immediate relevance to facilitate optimal behavior.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The power of the self: Anchoring information processing across contexts.

Scheller¹

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This raises the question whether the social relevance effect in cue integration depends on different processing stages that lead to either fission or fusion illusions (Bolognini et al, 2011; Mishra et al, 2007, 2008), or whether it is better explained as a probabilistic prior that biases the integration of sensory information into a perceptual whole. In line with the latter notion, it has been shown that self‐relevance can modulate prior expectancies of upcoming stimuli (Li et al, 2022; Sui et al, 2014) and that the self as a preceding spatial cue, compared to cues related to other people, can improve task performance by reducing the uncertainty of the location of upcoming targets (Liu et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Self as a prior: The malleability of Bayesian multisensory integration to social salience

Scheller,

Fang,

Sui

2023

British J of Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Our everyday perceptual experiences are grounded in the integration of information within and across our senses. Due to this direct behavioural relevance, cross‐modal integration retains a certain degree of contextual flexibility, even to social relevance. However, how social relevance modulates cross‐modal integration remains unclear. To investigate possible mechanisms, Experiment 1 tested the principles of audio‐visual integration for numerosity estimation by deriving a Bayesian optimal observer model with perceptual prior from empirical data to explain perceptual biases. Such perceptual priors may shift towards locations of high salience in the stimulus space. Our results showed that the tendency to over‐ or underestimate numerosity, expressed in the frequency and strength of fission and fusion illusions, depended on the actual event numerosity. Experiment 2 replicated the effects of social relevance on multisensory integration from Scheller & Sui, 2022 JEP:HPP, using a lower number of events, thereby favouring the opposite illusion through enhanced influences of the prior. In line with the idea that the self acts like a prior, the more frequently observed illusion (more malleable to prior influences) was modulated by self‐relevance. Our findings suggest that the self can influence perception by acting like a prior in cue integration, biasing perceptual estimates towards areas of high self‐relevance.

show abstract

“…Using more meaningful objects may be similarly beneficial for encouraging object-based cognitive control. Indeed, self-related object cues (compared to other-related object cues) enhanced performance in an attention network task, potentially due to the self-relation increasing the bottom-up salience of those objects (Li et al, 2022). Consistent with this possibility, there is some evidence that meaningful boundaries modulate location-based CSPC effects (Colvett & Bugg, 2022) and the use of meaningful objects (i.e., objects about which a naïve participant would know the semantic meaning) enhances object-based attention (Hu et al, 2020, Zhao et al, 2020; c.f., Roque & Boot, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revealing object-based cognitive control in a moving object paradigm.

Colvett,

Weidler,

Bugg

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Object-based attention and flexible adjustments of cognitive control based on contextual cues signaling the likelihood of distraction are well documented. However, no prior research has conclusively demonstrated that people flexibly adjust cognitive control to minimize distraction based on learned associations between task-irrelevant objects and distraction likelihood (i.e., object-based cognitive control). To fill this gap, we developed a novel paradigm during which participants responded to flanker stimuli appearing in one of multiple locations on two simultaneously presented objects. One object predicted a low likelihood of encountering an incongruent flanker stimulus and the other a high likelihood. After each response, the objects rotated clockwise such that all locations on average were 50% congruent, thereby eliminating confounds between location and likelihood of incongruence. Object-based cognitive control was evidenced by reduced flanker compatibility effects in the high compared to low conflict object. Across four experiments, we demonstrated that object-based cognitive control was dependent on a strong manipulation of the likelihood of conflict between objects and movement of the objects between trials. The novel evidence for objectbased cognitive control is important in showing that people exploit not only location as a cue to guide control, but additionally objects, mirroring evidence on object and location-based attention. Public Significance StatementNavigating daily life requires perceiving and interacting with objects. Previous research has shown that people can use locations or objects to guide their attention. Other research has shown that contextual cues (e.g., locations) that predict the likelihood of distraction guide cognitive control (e.g., how focused or distracted we are). However, it is not yet known whether objects guide cognitive control. We found that people focused their attention more for stimuli that appeared on an object they associated with high distraction than one they associated with low distraction. Moreover, people were more inclined to learn the level of distraction for an object when the objects were not stationary. This research expands knowledge about external cues humans use to optimize cognitive control as they navigate a world full of objects.

show abstract

Self-related objects increase alertness and orient attention through top-down saliency

Cited by 10 publications

References 49 publications

The power of the self: Anchoring information processing across contexts.

The power of the self: Anchoring information processing across contexts.

Self as a prior: The malleability of Bayesian multisensory integration to social salience

Revealing object-based cognitive control in a moving object paradigm.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About