Self-prioritization effect in the attentional blink paradigm: Attention-based or familiarity-based effect?

Causal Roles of Ventral and Dorsal Neural Systems for Automatic and Control Self-Reference Processing: A Function Lesion Mapping Study

Background: Humans perceive and interpret the world through the lens of self-reference processes, typically facilitating enhanced performance for the task at hand. However, this research has predominantly emphasized the automatic facet of self-reference processing, overlooking how it interacts with control processes affecting everyday situations. Methods: We investigated this relationship between automatic and control self-reference processing in neuropsychological patients performing self-face perception tasks and the Birmingham frontal task measuring executive functions. Results: Principal component analysis across tasks revealed two components: one loaded on familiarity/orientation judgments reflecting automatic self-reference processing, and the other linked to the cross task and executive function indicating control processing requirements. Voxel-based morphometry and track-wise lesion-mapping analyses showed that impairments in automatic self-reference were associated with reduced grey matter in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and right inferior temporal gyrus, and white matter damage in the right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus. Deficits in executive control were linked to reduced grey matter in the bilateral inferior parietal lobule and left anterior insula, and white matter disconnections in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus and arcuate fasciculus. Conclusions: The causal evidence suggests that automatic and control facets of self-reference processes are subserved by distinct yet integrated ventral prefrontal-temporal and dorsal frontal-parietal networks, respectively.

Exploring the influence of self-identification on perceptual judgments of physical and social causality

People tend to overestimate the causal contribution of the self to the observed outcome in various situations, a cognitive bias known as the 'illusion of control.' This study delves into whether this cognitive bias impacts causality judgments in animations depicting physical and social causal interactions. In two experiments, participants were instructed to associate themselves and a hypothetical stranger identity with two geometrical shapes (a circle and a square). Subsequently, they viewed animations portraying these shapes assuming the roles of agent and patient in causal interactions. Within one block, the shape related to the self served as the agent, while the shape associated with the stranger played the role of the patient. Conversely, in the other block, the identity-role association was reversed. We posited that the perception of the self as a causal agent might influence explicit judgments of physical and social causality. Experiment 1 demonstrated that physical causality ratings were solely shaped by kinematic cues. In Experiment 2, emphasising social causality, the dominance of kinematic parameters was confirmed. Therefore, contrary to the hypothesis anticipating diminished causality ratings with specific identity-role associations, results indicated negligible impact of our manipulation. The study contributes to understanding the interplay between kinematic and non-kinematic cues in human causal reasoning. It suggests that explicit judgments of causality in simple animations primarily rely on low-level kinematic cues, with the cognitive bias of overestimating the self's contribution playing a negligible role.

Testing the modulation of self-related automatic and others-related controlled processing by chronotype and time-of-day

We assessed whether self-related automatic and others-related controlled processes are modulated by chronotype and time-of-day. Here, a shape-label matching task composed of three geometrical shapes arbitrarily associated with you, friend, and stranger was used. Twenty Morning-types, and twenty Evening-types performed the task at the optimal and non-optimal times of day (i.e., 8 AM, or 8:30 PM). Morning-types did not exhibit noticeable synchrony effects, thus proving the better adaptation of these participants to non-optimal moments of the day as compared to Evening-types. Contrary to our predictions regarding the absence of automatic-processing modulation and the presence of controlled-processing influences by time-of-day, we found an influence on self-related but not others-related processing only in Evening-type participants. Although brain structures are not directly tackled, we argue that such modulation may be due to the dependence of the activation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), an essential component of the self-attention network on circadian rhythms.