The interaction between self-bias and reward: Evidence for common and distinct processes

What Can Physiology Tell Us about State of Interest?

The state of interest as a positive emotion is associated with the ability to comprehend new information and/or to better consolidate already perceived information, to increase the attention level to the object, to increase informational processing, and also to influence such processes as learning and motivation. The aim of this study was to reveal oculomotor correlates that can predict the locus of interest in cases of people perceiving educational information from different areas of knowledge presented as text or multimedia content. Sixty (60) volunteers participated in the study (50% males, mean age 22.20 ± 0.51). The stimuli consisted of 16 texts covering a wide range of topics, each accompanied by a comprehension question and an interest assessment questionnaire. It was found that the multimedia content type triggered more visual attention and gave an advantage in the early stages of information processing. The first fixation duration metric for the multimedia stimuli allowed u to characterize the subjective interest assessment. Overall, the results suggest the potential role of eye-tracking in evaluating educational content and it emphasizes the importance of developing solutions based on this method to enhance the effectiveness of the educational process.

Can irrelevant self-related information in working memory be actively suppressed?

To utilize the resource of working memory efficiently, the brain actively suppresses irrelevant information to focus cognitive resources on the task at hand. However, whether task-irrelevant self-related information can be suppressed is still an open question. This study explores the inhibitory effects of various types of identity-associated information (self, friend, stranger) with an irrelevant distracting paradigm, in which participants are required to memorize the color while ignoring the shape during a memory array. In the subsequent test array, participants are asked to judge whether the color of the test item is the same as the memorized one, while the ignored shape features could also change. The results are as follows. (1) Self-associated information survived the inhibitory effect no matter whether the interstimulus interval (ISI) was short or long. (2) Stranger-associated information remained inhibitory effect in a long ISI (3000 ms). The results indicate that self-associated information can bypass the executive system and remain active in working memory processing.

You do you: susceptibility of temporal binding to self-relevance

The self-prioritization effect suggests that self-relevant information has a processing advantage over information that is not directly associated with the self. In consequence, reaction times are faster and accuracy rates higher when reacting to self-associated stimuli rather than to other-related stimuli (Sui et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 38:1105-1117, 2012). This spurs the assumption that self-associated action-effects should also be perceived earlier than other-related outcomes. One way to measure this is temporal binding. Previous research indeed showed that the perceived temporal interval between actions and self-associated outcomes was reduced compared to friend- and other-associated outcomes. However, the employed method (interval estimations) and several experimental design choices make it impossible to discern whether the perceived shortening of the interval between a keypress and a self-relevant outcome is due to a perceptual shift of the action or of the action-effect or both. Thus, we conducted four experiments to assess whether temporal binding can indeed be modulated by self-relevance and if so where this perceptual bias is located. The results did not support stronger temporal binding for self- vs other-related action-effects. We discuss these results against the backdrop of the attentional basis of self-prioritization and propose directions for future research.

Self-processing in relation to emotion and reward processing in depression

BACKGROUND

Depression is characterised by a heightened self-focus, which is believed to be associated with differences in emotion and reward processing. However, the precise relationship between these cognitive domains is not well understood. We examined the role of self-reference in emotion and reward processing, separately and in combination, in relation to depression.

METHODS

Adults experiencing varying levels of depression (n = 144) completed self-report depression measures (PHQ-9, BDI-II). We measured self, emotion and reward processing, separately and in combination, using three cognitive tasks.

RESULTS

When self-processing was measured independently of emotion and reward, in a simple associative learning task, there was little association with depression. However, when self and emotion processing occurred in combination in a self-esteem go/no-go task, depression was associated with an increased positive other bias [b = 3.51, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.24-5.79]. When the self was processed in relation to emotion and reward, in a social evaluation learning task, depression was associated with reduced positive self-biases (b = 0.11, 95% CI 0.05-0.17).

CONCLUSIONS

Depression was associated with enhanced positive implicit associations with others, and reduced positive learning about the self, culminating in reduced self-favouring biases. However, when self, emotion and reward processing occurred independently there was little evidence of an association with depression. Treatments targeting reduced positive self-biases may provide more sensitive targets for therapeutic intervention and potential biomarkers of treatment responses, allowing the development of more effective interventions.

Time is of the essence: past selves are not prioritized even when selective discrimination costs are controlled for

The perceptual Self-Prioritization effect (SPE) refers to an advantage in attending to stimuli associated with the self relative to those associated with another individual. In the perceptual matching task, arbitrary pairings between oneself and other persons, and a geometric shape need to be learned. Apart from the SPE, this task also produces high matching performance for a close other. While cognitive representations of past selves are sometimes viewed as resembling that of an intimate other, and while there is some evidence that other types of psychological closeness modulate the SPE, it remains unclear whether such prioritization effects extend to past selves. Previous experiments on this topic required participants to distinguish between different points in time within the same task, raising the possibility that potential past self-prioritization was masked by task difficulty. In our experiment, we addressed this potential confound by presenting N = 118 participants with a simpler version of the matching task. We re-investigated self-prioritization in perceptual matching under conditions of mental time travel to the past. In line with previous evidence, we found clear prioritization of present selves, which was evident in response times, accuracies and the efficiency of practice. Performance was consistently poorest for the past self, indicating not only a lack of privileged processing, but rather a relative de-prioritization. Performance was not improved by either increased proximity of the time period in question, nor by experimenter-induced re-imagining of the self. Our results do not support a perceptual prioritization of past selves.

Reward-related self-agency is disturbed in depression and anxiety

BACKGROUND

The sense of agency, or the belief in action causality, is an elusive construct that impacts day-to-day experience and decision-making. Despite its relevance in a range of neuropsychiatric disorders, it is widely under-studied and remains difficult to measure objectively in patient populations. We developed and tested a novel cognitive measure of reward-dependent agency perception in an in-person and online cohort.

METHODS

The in-person cohort consisted of 52 healthy control subjects and 20 subjects with depression and anxiety disorders (DA), including major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. The online sample consisted of 254 participants. The task consisted of an effort implementation for monetary rewards with computerized visual feedback interference and trial-by-trial ratings of self versus other agency.

RESULTS

All subjects across both cohorts demonstrated higher self-agency after receiving positive-win feedback, compared to negative-loss feedback when the level of computer inference was kept constant. Patients with DA showed reduced positive feedback-dependent agency compared to healthy controls. Finally, in our online sample, we found that higher self-agency following negative-loss feedback was associated with worse anhedonia symptoms.

CONCLUSION

Together this work suggests how positive and negative environmental information impacts the sense of self-agency in healthy subjects, and how it is perturbed in patients with depression and anxiety.

Social affiliation is sufficient to provoke the partner-advantage

The partner-advantage is a type of identity-priority processing that we afford to a person with whom we perform a task together ¹. The partner-advantage has been revealed by shortened reaction time (RT) and enhanced accuracy when participants learned to match a shape with an associated name. It is distinguished from other long-lasting and robust identity advantages (e.g., self-advantage and friend-advantage) by its instantaneous build-up and quick reduction; however, its characteristics and enabling factors remain unknown. The present study addresses these questions. In Experiment 1, we replicated the partner-advantage in a solo shape-name matching task (i.e., without a social component) in which other identity biases are usually reported. In Experiment 2, an absent partner (who did not appear physically) was sufficient to induce beneficial partner-related processing, with a temporary partner enjoying a benefit similar to that of significant others. In Experiment 3, an identity low in socially affiliated significance (e.g., another participant in the same experiment) did not automatically enjoy a priority bias. Taken together, our results suggest that the bias toward partners, similar to other known identity biases, does not require physical presence to build and maintain a referential advantage. The partner-advantage does not automatically extend to other social affiliations, and a joint task is not a pre-requisite to produce the bias. Our study offers new insights on identity-referential processing and its underlying mechanisms.

Self-prioritization with unisensory and multisensory stimuli in a matching task

A shape-label matching task is commonly used to examine the self-advantage in motor reaction-time responses (the Self-Prioritization Effect; SPE). In the present study, auditory labels were introduced, and, for the first time, responses to unisensory auditory, unisensory visual, and multisensory object-label stimuli were compared across block-type (i.e., trials blocked by sensory modality type, and intermixed trials of unisensory and multisensory stimuli). Auditory stimulus intensity was presented at either 50 dB (Group 1) or 70 dB (Group 2). The participants in Group 2 also completed a multisensory detection task, making simple speeded motor responses to the shape and sound stimuli and their multisensory combinations. In the matching task, the SPE was diminished in intermixed trials, and in responses to the unisensory auditory stimuli as compared with the multisensory (visual shape+auditory label) stimuli. In contrast, the SPE did not differ in responses to the unisensory visual and multisensory (auditory object+visual label) stimuli. The matching task was associated with multisensory ‘costs’ rather than gains, but response times to self- versus stranger-associated stimuli were differentially affected by the type of multisensory stimulus (auditory object+visual label or visual shape+auditory label). The SPE was thus modulated both by block-type and the combination of object and label stimulus modalities. There was no SPE in the detection task. Taken together, these findings suggest that the SPE with unisensory and multisensory stimuli is modulated by both stimulus- and task-related parameters within the matching task. The SPE does not transfer to a significant motor speed gain when the self-associations are not task-relevant.

Levels of Self-representation and Their Sociocognitive Correlates in Late-Diagnosed Autistic Adults

The cognitive representation of oneself is central to other sociocognitive processes, including relations with others. It is reflected in faster, more accurate processing of self-relevant information, a "self-prioritisation effect" (SPE) which is inconsistent across studies in autism. Across two tasks with autistic and non-autistic participants, we explored the SPE and its relationship to autistic traits, mentalizing ability and loneliness. A SPE was intact in both groups, but together the two tasks suggested a reduced tendency of late-diagnosed autistic participants to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar others and greater ease disengaging from the self-concept. Correlations too revealed a complex picture, which we attempt to explore and disentangle with reference to the inconsistency across self-processing studies in autism, highlighting implications for future research.

Motivated semantic control: Exploring the effects of extrinsic reward and self-reference on semantic retrieval in semantic aphasia

Recent insights show that increased motivation can benefit executive control, but this effect has not been explored in relation to semantic cognition. Patients with deficits of controlled semantic retrieval in the context of semantic aphasia (SA) after stroke may benefit from this approach since 'semantic control' is considered an executive process. Deficits in this domain are partially distinct from the domain-general deficits of cognitive control. We assessed the effect of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in healthy controls and SA patients. Experiment 1 manipulated extrinsic reward using high or low levels of points for correct responses during a semantic association task. Experiment 2 manipulated the intrinsic value of items using self-reference, allocating pictures of items to the participant ('self') or researcher ('other') in a shopping game before participants retrieved their semantic associations. These experiments revealed that patients, but not controls, showed better performance when given an extrinsic reward, consistent with the view that increased external motivation may help ameliorate patients' semantic control deficits. However, while self-reference was associated with better episodic memory, there was no effect on semantic retrieval. We conclude that semantic control deficits can be reduced when extrinsic rewards are anticipated; this enhanced motivational state is expected to support proactive control, for example, through the maintenance of task representations. It may be possible to harness this modulatory impact of reward to combat the control demands of semantic tasks in SA patients.

Temporal continuity of self: Long autocorrelation windows mediate self-specificity

The self is characterized by an intrinsic temporal component consisting in continuity across time. On the neural level, this temporal continuity manifests in the brain's intrinsic neural timescales (INT) that can be measured by the autocorrelation window (ACW). Recent EEG studies reveal a relationship between resting state ACW and self-consciousness. However, it remains unclear whether ACW exhibits different degrees of task-related changes during self-specific compared to non-self-specific activities. To this end, participants in our study initially recorded an eight-minute autobiographical narrative. Following a resting-state session, participants were presented with their own narrative and the narrative of a stranger while undergoing concurrent EEG recording. Behaviorally, subjects evaluated both of the narratives and indicated their perceptions of positivity or negativity on a moment-to-moment basis by positioning a cursor relative to the center of the computer screen. Our results indicate: (a) greater spatial extension and velocity in the behavioral cursor movement during the self narrative assessment compared to the non-self narrative assessment; and (b) longer neural ACWs in response to the self- compared to the non-self narrative and rest. These findings demonstrate the importance of longer temporal windows in neural activity measured by ACWs for self-specificity. More broadly, the results highlight the relevance of temporal continuity for the self on the neural level. Such temporal continuity may, correspondingly, also manifest on the psychological level as a "common currency" between brain and self.

Self-referential Processing in Remitted Depression: An Event-Related Potential Study

Background

Identifying mechanisms of major depressive disorder that continue into remission is critical, as these mechanisms may contribute to subsequent depressive episodes. Biobehavioral markers related to depressogenic self-referential processing biases have been identified in adults with depression. Thus, we investigated whether these risk factors persisted during remission as well as contributed to the occurrence of stress and depressive symptoms over time.

Methods

At baseline, adults with remitted depression (n = 33) and healthy control subjects (n = 33) were administered diagnostic and stress interviews as well as self-report symptom measures. In addition, participants completed a self-referential encoding task while electroencephalography data were acquired. Stress interviews and self-report symptom measures were readministered at the 6-month follow-up assessment.

Results

Drift diffusion modeling showed that compared with healthy individuals, adults with remitted depression exhibited a slower drift rate to negative stimuli, indicating a slower tendency to reject negative stimuli as self-relevant. At the 6-month follow-up assessment, a slower drift rate to negative stimuli predicted greater interpersonal stress severity among individuals with remitted depression but not healthy individuals while controlling for both baseline depression symptoms and interpersonal stress severity. Highlighting the specificity of this effect, results were nonsignificant when predicting noninterpersonal stress. For self-relevant positive words endorsed, adults with remitted depression exhibited smaller left- than right-hemisphere late positive potential amplitudes; healthy control subjects did not show hemispheric differences.

Conclusions

Self-referential processing deficits persist into remission. In line with the stress generation framework, these biases predicted the occurrence of interpersonal stress, which may provide insight about a potential pathway for the re-emergence of depressive symptoms.

The roles of the LpSTS and DLPFC in self-prioritization: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study

The Self‐Attention Network (SAN) has been proposed to describe the underlying neural mechanism of the self‐prioritization effect, yet the roles of the key nodes in the SAN—the left posterior superior temporal sulcus (LpSTS) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)—still need to be clarified. One hundred and nine participants were randomly assigned into the LpSTS group, the DLPFC group, or the sham group. We used the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technique to selectively disrupt the functions of the corresponding targeted region, and observed its impacts on self‐prioritization effect based on the difference between the performance of the self‐matching task before and after the targeted stimulation. We analyzed both model‐free performance measures and HDDM‐based performance measures for the self‐matching task. The results showed that the inhibition of LpSTS could lead to reduced performance in processing self‐related stimuli, which establishes a causal role for the LpSTS in self‐related processing and provide direct evidence to support the SAN framework. However, the results of the DLPFC group from HDDM analysis were distinct from the results based on response efficiency. Our investigation further the understanding of the differentiated roles of key nodes in the SAN in supporting the self‐salience in information processing.

Prioritization of personally relevant stimuli in male abstinent heroin users

The prioritization of the processing of highly relevant personal stimuli pervades various cognitive domains and is vital to our survival and normal functioning. However, the extent to which this process is altered by drug addiction remains to be elucidated. The present study examined the self-prioritization effect in abstinent heroin users (AHUs) using the perceptual matching task, which controls for the confounding effect of familiarity, and further modified it to revalidate the drug-prioritization effect (DPE). Eighty male AHUs and forty healthy control (HC) participants were recruited for this study. Participants filled in the questionnaire and completed two perceptual matching tasks. The questionnaire included demographic information (e.g., age, education) and characteristics of drug use, whereas the HC participants only completed the demographic information. AHUs exhibited a robust self-advantage in the self-perceptual matching task, and that the magnitude of the self-prioritization effect (MSPE) was comparable to that in HCs. Only AHUs prioritized the processing of drug-related stimuli in the drug-perceptual matching task, and showed similar prioritization effects during self- and drug-related processing. The MSPE and magnitude of the drug-prioritization effect (MDPE) were correlated with the heroin consumption behavior in AHUs. The process of self-prioritization is intact in drug users, and they uniquely prioritize the processing of drug cues. The similar pattern between the self- and drug-related processing provided behavioral evidence to support that drug cues are likely to be associated with heightened personal relevance in drug users. These prioritization processes may play critical roles in addiction and provide a promising route for intervention.

A Combined Effect of Self and Reward: Relationship of Self- and Reward-Bias on Associative Learning

Previous studies have demonstrated that individuals process information related to themselves or a high reward quickly and have referred to this as self-bias or reward-bias. However, no previous study has presented self- and reward-bias simultaneously. The present study investigated perceptual processing using the associated learning paradigm when both self and reward were prioritized (condition of double salience) as well as when only self or reward was prioritized (condition of single salience). The present study established these two conditions by manipulating self-relevance (self vs. stranger in Experiment 1; self vs. friend in Experiment 2). The results showed that (1) when the self was pitted against a stranger and received a high or low reward, perceptual processing of the participants mainly involved self-bias (Experiment 1); (2) when the self was pitted against a friend, perceptual processing involved both self-bias and reward-bias (Experiment 2). The study revealed a complex relationship between self- and reward-bias, which depends on the degree of affinity between oneself and others.

Multisensory Perceptual Biases for Social and Reward Associations

Linking arbitrary shapes (e.g., circles, squares, and triangles) to personal labels (e.g., self, friend, or stranger) or reward values (e.g., £18, £6, or £2) results in immediate processing benefits for those stimuli that happen to be associated with the self or high rewards in perceptual matching tasks. Here we further explored how social and reward associations interact with multisensory stimuli by pairing labels and objects with tones (low, medium, and high tones). We also investigated whether self and reward biases persist for multisensory stimuli with the label removed after an association had been made. Both high reward stimuli and those associated with the self, resulted in faster responses and improved discriminability (i.e., higher d’), which persisted for multisensory stimuli even when the labels were removed. However, these self- and reward-biases partly depended on the specific alignment between the physical tones (low, medium, and high) and the conceptual (social or reward) order. Performance for reward associations improved when the endpoints of low or high rewards were paired with low or high tones; meanwhile, for personal associations, there was a benefit when the self was paired with either low or high tones, but there was no effect when the stranger was associated with either endpoint. These results indicate that, unlike reward, social personal associations are not represented along a continuum with two marked endpoints (i.e., self and stranger) but rather with a single reference point (the self vs. other).

Overlap in processing advantages for minimal ingroups and the self

Cognitive biases shape our perception of the world and our interactions with other people. Information related to the self and our social ingroups is prioritised for cognitive processing and can therefore form some of these key biases. However, ingroup biases may be elicited not only for established social groups, but also for minimal groups assigned by novel or random social categorisation. Moreover, whether these ‘ingroup biases’ are related to self-processing is unknown. Across three experiments, we utilised a social associative matching paradigm to examine whether the cognitive mechanisms underpinning the effects of minimal groups overlapped with those that prioritise the self, and whether minimal group allocation causes early processing advantages. We found significant advantages in response time and sensitivity (dprime) for stimuli associated with newly-assigned ingroups. Further, self-biases and ingroup-biases were positively correlated across individuals (Experiments 1 and 3). However, when the task was such that ingroup and self associations competed, only the self-advantage was detected (Experiment 2). These results demonstrate that even random group allocation quickly captures attention and enhances processing. Positive correlations between the self- and ingroup-biases suggest a common cognitive mechanism across individuals. These findings have implications for understanding how social biases filter our perception of the world.

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

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.

A Developmental Study of the Self-Prioritization Effect in Children Between 6 and 10 Years of Age

Self-biases are well described in adults but remain poorly understood in children. Here, we investigated in 6-10 year-old children (N = 132) the self-prioritization effect (SPE), a self-bias which reflects, in adults, the perceptual advantage for stimuli arbitrarily associated with the self as compared to those associated with other persons. We designed a child-friendly adaptation of a paradigm originally introduced in adults by Sui, He, and Humphreys (2012) in order to test whether the SPE also occurs in children and if so, to determine its evolution with age. A robust SPE was obtained from the age of 6, and this effect was similar-sized in our four age groups. These findings are discussed with reference to the development of the self during childhood.

Saliency at first sight: instant identity referential advantage toward a newly met partner

Neutral information enjoys beneficial processing when it is associated with self and significant others, but less is known about how the identity referential advantage is constructed in the initial stages of a relationship. We offer a novel solution by asking if a newly met stranger could provide a processing advantage in a shape-identity matching task where shapes were associated with the names of different identities. Each participant was paired with a newly met partner in a joint shape-identity matching task in which three shapes were associated with the names of the participant or his/her best friend, the partner, and a stranger, respectively. The participants judged whether or not the shape and name correctly matched.

Intriguingly, the trials related to a newly met partner exhibited instant referential saliency, which was more accurate and faster than that related to the stranger’s name (baseline) when the partner was physically present (experiments 1, 2, 4, 5), but not when the partner was absent (experiment 3). Self-advantage, however, was robust and lasting. The precursor of physical presence when forming referential saliency toward a stranger and its distinct temporal dynamics imply a novel referential benefit unendowed with familiarity, which is qualitatively different from the well-documented self/friend-advantage effect.

The relations between temporal and social perceptual biases: Evidence from perceptual matching

We report a new "now-bias" effect on simple perceptual matching between shapes and labels and examined the relation between this now-bias effect and the self-bias previously established with this task (Sui, He, & Humphreys, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 1105-1117, 2012). The perceptual biases favoring present-relevant and self-relevant information were correlated with each other, suggesting a common underlying mechanism. Nevertheless, temporal biases in decision making, specifically in temporal discounting, correlated with the perceptual self-bias but not with the perceptual now-bias. We suggest that common attentional biases to present-relevant and self-relevant information mediate perceptual prioritization, whereas temporal discounting is likely involved in a separate reward evaluation mechanism that relates to self-bias processes.

Distraction Modulates Self-Referential Effects in the Processing of Monetary and Social Rewards

A reward that is personally relevant tends to induce stronger pursuit motivation than a reward that is linked to other people. However, the role of attention in eliciting this “self-referential reward effect” remains unclear. In our two studies, we evaluated the significance of attention in self-referential reward processing utilizing an ownership paradigm, which required participants to complete a visual search task to win either monetary rewards (in Study 1) or social rewards (in Study 2) for themselves or for an acquaintance. Access to attentional resources was manipulated by sometimes including a distracting stimulus among the presented stimuli. The results of Study 1 revealed that a significant self-referential reward effect emerged under undistracted attentional conditions and was associated with improved task performance when self-owned monetary rewards were available. However, distracted attention impaired this self-referential reward effect. Moreover, distracted attention was also observed in the self-referential social reward processing in Study 2. These results suggested that distracted attention can impair the pursuit advantage for self-relevant rewards; self-referential processing is strongly dependent on attentional resources.

Self-reference in action: Arm-movement responses are enhanced in perceptual matching

Considerable evidence now shows that making a reference to the self in a task modulates attention, perception, memory, and decision-making. Furthermore, the self-reference effect (SRE) cannot be reduced to domain-general factors (e.g., reward value) and is supported by distinct neural circuitry. However, it remains unknown whether self-associations modulate response execution as well. This was tested in the present study. Participants carried out a perceptual-matching task, and movement time (MT) was measured separately from reaction-time (RT; drawing on methodology from the literature on intelligence). A response box recorded 'home'-button-releases (measuring RT from stimulus onset); and a target-key positioned 14 cm from the response box recorded MT (from 'home'-button-release to target-key depression). MTs of responses to self- as compared with other-person-associated stimuli were faster (with a higher proportion correct for self-related responses). We present a novel demonstration that the SRE can modulate the execution of rapid-aiming arm-movement responses. Implications of the findings are discussed, along with suggestions to guide and inspire future work in investigating how the SRE influences action.

Aging enhances cognitive biases to friends but not the self

We measured changes in self and friend biases in perceptual matching in young and older participants. Participants learned associations between neutral geometric shapes and three personal labels (You, Friend, or Stranger), representing themselves, their named best friend, and a stranger not corresponding to anyone they knew. They then responded whether the shapes and labels matched or mismatched. In addition, participants reported the perceived personal distance between themselves, their best friend, and a stranger. Relative to young participants, older adults showed an increased bias toward matching their friends over strangers, whereas the bias toward the self over friends tended to decrease. Equivalent results occurred for a perceived personal distance measure, and, on measures of perceptual sensitivity with older participants, the personal distance between friends and strangers correlated with the friend bias in matching. These results indicate that the social bias toward a familiar best friend increases with age and modulates perceptual matching.

Self and team prioritisation effects in perceptual matching: Evidence for a shared representation

Previous research has demonstrated that in-group favouritism occurs not only in higher-level judgments such as reward allocation, but also in low-level perceptual and attentional tasks. Recently, Moradi, Sui, Hewstone, and Humphreys (2015) found a novel effect of in-group bias on a simple perceptual matching task in which football fans responded more efficiently to stimuli newly associated with their own football team than stimuli associated with rival or neutral teams. This result is consistent with a robust self-bias effect in which individuals show a large performance advantage in responding to stimuli associated with the self over stimuli associated with a close friend or a stranger (Sui, He, & Humphreys, 2012). The present research utilised a perceptual matching paradigm to investigate the relations between self and in-group prioritisation amongst a sample of college rowers. Across two experiments, we demonstrated a reliable performance advantage for self and team stimuli. We also found a relationship between the self and team advantage in RT, and demonstrated an overlap in the perception of self- and team-associated shapes that was stronger in participants who reported a greater sense of group identity with their team. Further, we found no relation between the team bias and positive valence implicitly associated with the team, showing that the team bias effects are unlikely to be driven by emotional significance. The results are consistent with an overlap between self and in-group representation, which may provide evidence for a common process driving both self and in-group perceptual advantage effects.

Consciously over Unconsciously Perceived Rewards Facilitate Self-face Processing: An ERP Study

Consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards are thought to modulate essential cognitive processes in different ways. However, little is known about whether and how they modulate higher-order social cognitive processes. The present ERP study aimed to investigate the effect of consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards on the temporal course of self-face processing. After a monetary reward (high or low) was presented either supraliminally or subliminally, participants gain this reward by rapidly and correctly judging whether the mouth shape of a probe face and a target face (self, friend, and stranger) were same. Results showed a significant three-way interaction between reward value, reward presentation type, and face type observed at the P3 component. For the supraliminal presentations, self-faces elicited larger P3 after high compared to low reward cues; however, friend-faces elicited smaller P3 and stranger-faces elicited equivalent P3 under this condition. For the subliminal presentations, self-faces still elicited larger P3 for high reward cues, whereas there were no significant P3 differences for friend-faces or stranger-faces. Together, these results suggest that consciously processed rewards have distinct advantages over unconsciously processed rewards in facilitating self-face processing by flexibly and effectively integrating reward value with self-relevance.

Self-relevance effects and label choice: Strong variations in label-matching performance due to non-self-relevant factors

Merely associating one's self with a stimulus may be enough to enhance performance in a label-matching paradigm (Sui, He, & Humphreys, 2012), implying prioritized processing of self-relevant stimuli. For instance, labeling a square as SELF and a circle as OTHER yields speeded performance when verifying square-SELF compared with circle-OTHER label matches. The precise causes of such effects are unclear. We propose that prioritized processing of label-matches can occur for reasons other than self-relevance. Here, we employ the label-matching paradigm to show similar benefits for non-self-relevant labels (SNAKE, FROG, and GREG) over a frequently employed, non-self-relevant control label (OTHER). These benefits suggest the possibility that self-relevance effects in the label-matching paradigm may be confounded with other properties of labels that lead to relative performance benefits, such as concreteness. The size of self-relevance effects may be overestimated in prior work employing the label-matching paradigm, which calls for greater care in the choice of control labels to determine the true magnitude of self-relevance effects. Our results additionally indicate the possibility of a powerful effect of concreteness (and related properties) on associative memory performance.

Reward Promotes Self-Face Processing: An Event-Related Potential Study

The present study adopted a reward-priming paradigm to investigate whether and how monetary reward cues affected self-face processing. Event-related potentials were recorded during judgments of head orientation of target faces (self, friend, and stranger), with performance associated with a monetary reward. The results showed self-faces elicited larger N2 mean amplitudes than other-faces, and mean N2 amplitudes increased after monetary reward as compared with no reward cue. Moreover, an interaction effect between cue type and face type was observed for the P3 component, suggesting that both self-faces and friend-faces elicited larger P3 mean amplitudes than stranger-faces after no reward cue, with no significant difference between self-faces and friend-faces under this condition. However, self-faces elicited larger P3 mean amplitudes than friend-faces when monetary reward cues were provided. Interestingly, the enhancement of reward on friend-faces processing was observed at late positive potentials (LPP; 450–600 ms), suggesting that the LPP difference between friend-faces and stranger-faces was enhanced with monetary reward cues. Thus, we found that the enhancement effect of reward on self-relevant processing occurred at the later stages, but not at the early stage. These findings suggest that the activation of the reward expectations can enhance self-face processing, yielding a robust and sustained modulation over their overlapped brain areas where reward and self-relevant processing mechanisms may operate together.

Dissociating biases towards the self and positive emotion

We examined whether self-biases in perceptual matching reflect the positive valence of self-related stimuli. Participants associated geometric shapes with either personal labels (e.g., you, friend, stranger) or faces with different emotional expressions (e.g., happy, neutral, sad). They then judged whether shape-label or shape-face pairs were as originally shown or re-paired. Match times were faster to self-associated stimuli and to stimuli associated with the most positive valence. In addition, both the self-bias and the positive emotion bias were reliable across individuals in different test sessions. In contrast there was no sign of a correlation between the self-bias and the emotion-bias effects. We argue that self-bias and the bias to stimuli linked to positive emotion are separate and may reflect different underlying processes.