Cultural difference in neural mechanisms of self-recognition

The distinct effects of fearful and disgusting scenes on self-relevant face recognition

Self-face recognition denotes the process by which a person can recognize their own face by distinguishing it from another's face. Although many research studies have explored the inhibition effect of negative information on self-relevant face processing, few researchers have examined whether negative scenes influence self-relevant face processing. Fearful and disgusting scenes are typical negative scenes, but little research to data has examined their discriminative effects on self-relevant face recognition. To investigate these issues, the current study explored the effect of negative scenes on self-relevant face recognition. In Study 1, 44 participants (20 men, 24 women) were asked to judge the orientation of a target face (self-face or friend-face) pictured in a negative or neutral scene, whereas 40 participants (19 men, 21 women) were asked to complete the same task in a fearful, disgusting, or neutral scene in Study 2. The results showed that negative scenes inhibited the speed of recognizing self-faces. Furthermore, the above effect of negative scenes on self-relevant face recognition occurred with fearful rather than disgusting scenes. Our findings suggest the distinct effects of fearful scenes and disgusting scenes on self-relevant face processing, which may be associated with the automatic attentional capture to negative scenes (especially fearful scenes) and the tendency to escape self-awareness.

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

The self-prioritization effect (SPE) refers to the advantage in processing stimuli associated with oneself. Here, we addressed the SPE in an attentional blink (AB) task. In Experiment 1, shapes associated to you, friend, or stranger served as T1, and letter X as T2. The AB effect was larger for you than the other label conditions, and larger for friend condition than for stranger condition. We suggest that self-associated shape increased its perceptual salience, producing greater attentional capture. In Experiment 2 participants trained with a shape-label matching task to increase familiarity with the shape-label associations before performing the AB task. The difference between friend and stranger conditions disappeared, suggesting that the difference between the two conditions observed in Experiment 1 was mainly due to differences in familiarity or frequency of use. Importantly, the advantage of you over friend and stranger conditions remained, suggesting that the SPE is a genuine effect.

Electrophysiological correlates of self-prioritization

Personally relevant stimuli exert a powerful influence on social cognition. What is not yet fully understood, however, is how early in the processing stream self-relevance influences decisional operations. Here we used a shape-label matching task in conjunction with electroencephalography and computational modeling to explore this issue. A theoretically important pattern of results was observed. First, a standard self-prioritization effect emerged indicating that responses to self-related items were faster and more accurate than responses to other-related stimuli. Second, a hierarchical drift diffusion model analysis revealed that this effect was underpinned by the enhanced uptake of evidence from self-related stimuli. Third, self-other discrimination during matching trials was observed at both early posterior N1 and late centro-parietal P3 components. Fourth, whereas the N1 was associated with the rate of information accumulation during decisional processing, P3 activity was linked with the evidential requirements of response selection. These findings elucidate the electrophysiological correlates of self-prioritization.

Self-reference processing of fat-face and sick-face in individuals with different disgust sensitivity: Evidence from behavioral and neuroelectrophysiology

Self-reference effect has been widely discussed. Previous scholars believed that self-related information can be processed faster is due to the positive attribute of self-concept which speeds up self-related information processing. When self-related information is given negative attributes, the self-reference effect will be weakened. In this study, fat and sick, two kinds of stimuli associated with disgust characteristics, were added to self- and other-faces. We found that disease stimuli, which are closely related to survival threats, eliminated the self-reference effect while the obesity stimuli only weakened the self-reference effect to a certain extent. Event-related potential (ERP) analysis demonstrated that sick-faces have a greater amplitude than standard-faces in the EPN and LPP components. We believe that this may be due to the urgency of the disease threat, which leads to the selective attention to the disease threat in the early perception stage and the allocation of more attention resources for rapid response in the later stage. In addition, we found that disgust sensitivity specifically maintains individuals' self-referential effects by dissociating individuals from others in disease contexts. These results further support the behavioral immune function of disgust as a gatekeeper of the self in potentially contaminated environments. In conclusion, our study showed that in the face of survival threat, the self-reference effect is eliminated, and disgust tried to slow down this elimination effect to protect self. This study extends the behavioral immunity theory to some extent and further deepens the understanding of the relationship between disgust and self.

Cultural differences in neurocognitive mechanisms underlying believing

Believing as a fundamental mental process influences other cognitive/affective processes and behavior. However, it is unclear whether believing engages distinct neurocognitive mechanisms in people with different cultural experiences. We addressed this issue by scanning Chinese and Danish adults using functional MRI during believing judgments on personality traits of oneself and a celebrity. Drift diffusion model analyses of behavioral performances revealed that speed/quality of information acquisition varied between believing judgments on positive and negative personality traits in Chinese but not in Danes. Chinese adopted a more conservative strategy of decision-making during celebrity- than self-believing judgments whereas an opposite pattern was observed in Danes. Non-decisional processes were longer for celebrity- than for self-believing in Danes but not in Chinese. Believing judgments activated the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in both cultural groups but elicited stronger left anterior insular and ventral frontal activations in Chinese. Greater mPFC activity in Chinese was associated with longer duration of non-decision processes during believing-judgments, which predicted slower retrieval of self-related information in a memory test. Greater mPFC activity in Danes, however, was associated with a less degree of adopting a conservative strategy during believing judgments, which predicted faster retrieval of self-related information. Our findings highlight different neurocognitive processes engaged in believing between individuals from East Asian and Western cultures.

Yes! I love my mother as much as myself: Self- and mother-association effects in an Indian sample

Information associated with the self is preferentially processed compared to information associated with others. However, cultural differences appear to exist in the way information is processed about those close to us like our mothers. In Eastern compared with Western cultures, information about the mother seems to be processed as well as our self. However, it is not clear whether this lack of difference is due to familiarity or would extend to processing arbitrary perceptual information associated with different categorical labels. The current study employs a perceptual association paradigm in which category labels like self, mother, and none are associated with arbitrary shapes to study self versus mother processing in an Indian sample. We hypothesised that there would be no difference between self and mother processing given the familial and collectivistic tendencies in India. Participants in two experiments performed a matching task between a shape and a pre-assigned category label, with self, mother, and none as categories in Experiment 1A and self, friend, and none as categories in Experiment 1B. As expected, analysis of response times (RT), accuracies, and signal detection theoretic measures showed that information about mother is processed as well as self in Experiment 1A, but this effect is not present with friend in Experiment 1B. Moreover, participants' processing for the self-associated information gets attenuated depending upon the other close person category used in the task (friend vs. mother) indicating that self-information processing is dynamically dependent on the categorical contexts in which such processing takes place. Our findings have implications for understanding the processing of self-associated information across cultures and contexts.

What COVID-19 tells us about the self: The deep intersubjective and cultural layers of our brain

The COVID-19 crisis is affecting our sense of self and touches upon our existential fears. This extends to the self-other relationship, as there is both being infected and infecting the other. What does this pandemic crisis tell us about our self and relatedness, its cultural differences, and how these are rooted in the brain's relation to the world? First, we discuss the psychological and neuronal features of self and self-other relation and how they are rooted in a deeper layer of the brain's neural activity complementing its cognitive surface layer. Second, we demonstrate cultural differences of Eastern and Western concepts of the self (i.e., independency and interdependency) and how these reflect the manifestation of the brain's neuro-social and neuro-ecological alignment. Finally, we highlight the intersubjective and cultural nature of the self and its surface in the COVID-19 crisis. Discussing various lines of empirical data showing the brain's intimate alignment to both social and ecological environmental contexts, our results support the assumption of the brain's deep layer features by laying bare a continuum of different degrees of neuro-social and neuro-ecological alignment. This entails a two-stage model of self with neuro-social-ecological and psychological levels that extends the previously suggested basis model of self-specificity. We conclude that the current pandemic shows the importance of the deeper intersubjective and cultural layers of both the self and brain; their neglect can be life-threatening for the self and others and, paradoxically, might reduce, rather than enlarge, the self's sense of freedom and independence.

Self-esteem and cultural worldview buffer mortality salience effects on responses to self-face: Distinct neural mediators

Terror management theory proposes cultural worldview and self-esteem as two buffers against death anxiety. The neural mediators of these buffering effects, however, have not been fully understood. The present work investigated neural mediation mechanisms between self-esteem/cultural trait (self-construal) and mortality salience (MS) effects on self-face processing. We found that MS (vs. NA) priming eliminated self-face advantage in behavioral judgments of face-orientation in low self-esteem individuals and reduced self-face advantage in behavioral judgments of facial-familiarity in individuals with high interdependent self-construals. Our functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results showed that, following MS priming, insular activities mediated the relationship between self-esteem and self-face advantage in face-orientation judgments, whereas dorsal medial prefrontal activity mediated the relationship between interdependent self-construal and self-face advantage in face-familiarity judgments. Our findings suggest that distinct neural mechanisms are engaged in mediating the relationships between self-esteem/cultural trait and MS effects on the emotional and cognitive processes of self-relevant information.

Cultural neuroscience and the research domain criteria: Implications for global mental health

A comprehensive understanding of the basic molecular and cellular mechanisms of the brain is important for the scientific discovery of root causes, risk and protective factors for mental disorders in global mental health. Systematic research in cultural neuroscience within the research domain criteria (RDoC) framework investigates the fundamental biobehavioral dimensions and observable behavior across cultures. Cultural dimensions are characterized in elements of circuit-based mechanisms and behavior across a range of analysis. Research approaches in cultural neuroscience within the RDoC framework advance the evidence-based resources for the development and implementation of cures, preventions and interventions to mental disorders in global mental health. This review presents a novel synthesis of foundations in cultural neuroscience within the research domain criteria framework to advance integrative, translational efforts in discovery and delivery science of mental disorders across cultural contexts in global mental health.

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

Considerable research has shown that children with dyslexia have deficits in visual spatial attention orientation. Additionally, self-referential processing makes self-related information play a unique role in the individual visual spatial attention orientation. However, it is unclear whether such self-referential processing impacts the visual spatial attention orientation of children with dyslexia. Therefore, we manipulated the reference task systematically in the cue-target paradigm and investigated the modulation effect of self-referential processing on visual spatial attention of children with dyslexia. In the self-referential processing condition, we observed that children with dyslexia demonstrated stable cue effects in the visual spatial attention orientation tasks when the Stimulus Onset Asynchronies (SOAs) were set to 100 ms, while other-referential processing weakened the cue effects of the visual spatial attention orientation of children with dyslexia. With cue effect as the index, we also observed that the self-referential processing had a significant larger regulatory effect at the early stage of visual spatial attention orientation, as compared with other-referential processing. These differences have a high-ranked consistency between children with dyslexia and typically developing reader. The results suggested that self-referential processing can regulate the visual spatial attention deficits of children with dyslexia.

Evaluating Social Media Response to Urban Flood Disaster: Case Study on an East Asian City (Wuhan, China)

Social media is an important tool for disaster prevention and management. To reveal the public responses to disasters on social media in the context of East Asian culture, an urban flood disaster event that occurred in Wuhan City, China, in the summer of 2016 was selected as a case. Data were collected from Sina-Weibo, which is the earliest and most popular social media platform in China. We categorized a total of 17047 messages into four types, analyzed the Pearson correlation between information dissemination and precipitation, and identified the important accounts and their messages in the social networks by visualized analysis. The results show that there is a one-day lag between participation and public response. Message dissemination has a steeply downward trend over time, that is, a long tail effect. Information disseminates quickly within two hours, and then dissemination declines after four hours, with opinion messages disseminating faster than other types of messages. Famous news organizations and several celebrities play a leading role in social networks. In general, the participation of Chinese netizens in disaster events is lower than that of people in Western countries, and social media is not yet used as a tool for disaster response.

Finding the vanished self: Perspective modulates neural substrates of self-reflection in Buddhists

Asians' self-views are flexible and influenced by short-term situational and long-term cultural factors. Due to the long-term religious cultural influence of Chinese Buddhism, Buddhists showed no self-advantage in behavioral and neural level in many previous studies. However, it is unclear whether Chinese Buddhists really have no self-awareness or self-concept. The beliefs of illusionary self and thinking of others first might suggest that the self of Buddhists comes from others' perspective. The present study examined the self of Buddhists in first- and third-person perspective through the self-referential processing paradigm, comparing the behavioral and neural difference when they make self-, friend- and famous-judgment. The behavioral data showed that there were no different recognition ratios between self-, friend-, and famous-processing for participants in first- and third-person perspective. However, the neural results showed that people in third-person perspective group showed significant difference between self- and famous-processing in ventral medial prefrontal cortex, whereas people in first-person perspective group did not show any significant difference in activation between self-, friend-, and famous-processing in these regions. These findings suggested that Buddhists have self-referential processing only in third-person perspective, not in first-person perspective. This study provides neuroimaging evidence for the influence of perspective on Buddhists' self-reflection, and provide empirical evidence supporting and extending culture as situated cognition model of Asia by considering perspective factor.

The effect of emotional and self-referential contexts on ERP responses towards surprised faces

The perception of surprised faces is demonstrably modulated by emotional context. However, the influence of self-relevance and its interaction with emotional context have not been explored. The present study investigated the effects of contextual valence and self-reference on the perception of surprised faces. Our results revealed that faces in a negative context elicited a larger N170 than those in a neutral context. The EPN was affected by the interaction between contextual valence and self-reference, with larger amplitudes for faces in self-related positive contexts and sender-related negative contexts. Additionally, LPP amplitudes were enhanced for faces in negative contexts relative to neutral and positive contexts, as well as for self-related contexts in comparison to sender-related contexts. Together, these findings help to elucidate the psychophysiological mechanisms underlying the effects of emotional and self-referential contexts on the perception of surprised faces, which are characterized by distinctive ERPs.

Cultural Orientation of Self-Bias in Perceptual Matching

Previous research on cross-culture comparisons found that Western cultures tend to value independence and the self is construed as an autonomous individual, while Eastern cultures value interdependence and self-identity is perceived as embedded among friends and family members (Markus and Kitayama, 1991). The present experiment explored these cultural differences in the context of a paradigm developed by Sui et al. (2012), which found a bias toward the processing of self-relevant information using perceptual matching tasks. In this task, each neutral shape (i.e., triangle, circle, square) is associated with a person (i.e., self, friend, stranger), and faster and more accurate responses were found to formerly neutral stimuli tagged to the self compared to stimuli tagged to non-self. With this paradigm, the current study examined cross-cultural differences in the self-bias effect between participants from Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. Results demonstrated a reliable self-bias effect across groups consistent with previous studies. Importantly, a variation was identified in a larger self-bias toward stranger-associated stimuli in the United Kingdom participants than the Hong Kong participants. This suggested the cultural modulation of the self-bias effect in perceptual matching.

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

This study explored the modulatory role of independent/interdependent self-construal on ensemble perception. Two experiments were conducted to study the effect of self-construal on ensemble coding of multiple-face identities (Experiment 1) and dot size (Experiment 2) separately. Before the implicit ensemble perception task, participants in both experiments were either primed with independent or interdependent self-construal via a well-validated pronoun circle task, in which they were exposed to either singular ("I," "me," and "my") or plural ("We," "us," and "our") pronouns in essays. The results showed that interdependent self-construal (vs. independent self-construal) featured as global processing and emphasizing interconnectedness with others enhanced the ensemble coding of high-level features (e.g., identity in Experiment 1) but not of low-level features (e.g., size in Experiment 2). To the best of our knowledge, this study was the first to investigate the role of self-construal on ensemble representations. In sum, the results of the current study supported the domain-specific mechanism of ensemble perception on one hand, and extended the effect of self-construal on single face recognition to multiple face recognition on the other hand.

Preliminary Evidence of a Missing Self Bias in Face Perception for Individuals with Dissociative Identity Disorder

Failing to recognize one's mirror image can signal an abnormality in one's sense of self. In dissociative identity disorder (DID), individuals often report that their mirror image can feel unfamiliar or distorted. They also experience some of their own thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations as if they are nonautobiographical and sometimes as if instead, they belong to someone else. To assess these experiences, we designed a novel backwards masking paradigm in which participants were covertly shown their own face, masked by a stranger's face. Participants rated feelings of familiarity associated with the strangers' faces. 21 control participants without trauma-generated dissociation rated masks, which were covertly preceded by their own face, as more familiar compared to masks preceded by a stranger's face. In contrast, across two samples, 28 individuals with DID and similar clinical presentations (DSM-IV Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified type 1) did not show increased familiarity ratings to their own masked face. However, their familiarity ratings interacted with self-reported identity state integration. Individuals with higher levels of identity state integration had response patterns similar to control participants. These data provide empirical evidence of aberrant self-referential processing in DID/DDNOS and suggest this is restored with identity state integration.

Malleability of the self: electrophysiological correlates of the enfacement illusion

Self-face representation is fundamentally important for self-identity and self-consciousness. Given its role in preserving identity over time, self-face processing is considered as a robust and stable process. Yet, recent studies indicate that simple psychophysics manipulations may change how we process our own face. Specifically, experiencing tactile facial stimulation while seeing similar synchronous stimuli delivered to the face of another individual seen as in a mirror, induces 'enfacement' illusion, i.e. the subjective experience of ownership of the other's face and a bias in attributing to the self, facial features of the other person. Here we recorded visual Event-Related Potentials elicited by the presentation of self, other and morphed faces during a self-other discrimination task performed immediately after participants received synchronous and control asynchronous Interpersonal Multisensory Stimulation (IMS). We found that self-face presentation after synchronous as compared to asynchronous stimulation significantly reduced the late positive potential (LPP; 450-750 ms), a reliable electrophysiological marker of self-identification processes. Additionally, enfacement cancelled out the differences in LPP amplitudes produced by self- and other-face during the control condition. These findings represent the first direct neurophysiological evidence that enfacement may affect self-face processing and pave the way to novel paradigms for exploring defective self-representation and self-other interactions.

Individual Differences in Vicarious Pain Perception Linked to Heightened Socially Elicited Emotional States

For some people (vicarious pain responders), seeing others in pain is experienced as pain felt on their own body and this has been linked to differences in the neurocognitive mechanisms that support empathy. Given that empathy is not a unitary construct, the aim of this study was to establish which empathic traits are more pronounced in vicarious pain responders. The Vicarious Pain Questionnaire (VPQ) was used to divide participants into three groups: (1) non-responders (people who report no pain when seeing someone else experiencing physical pain), (2) sensory-localized responders (report sensory qualities and a localized feeling of pain) and (3) affective-general responders (report a generalized and emotional feeling of pain). Participants completed a series of questionnaires including the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Empathy Quotient (EQ), the Helping Attitudes Scale (HAS), and the Emotional Contagion Scale (ECS) as well as The Individualism – Collectivism Interpersonal Assessment Inventory (ICIAI) and a self-other association task. Both groups of vicarious pain responders showed significantly greater emotional contagion and reactivity, but there was no evidence for differences in other empathic traits or self-other associations. Subsequently, the variables were grouped by a factor analysis and three main latent variables were identified. Vicarious pain responders showed greater socially elicited emotional states which included the ECS, the Emotional Reactivity Subscale of EQ and the HAS. These results show that consciously feeling the physical pain of another is mainly linked to heightened emotional contagion and reactivity which together with the HAS loaded on the socially elicited emotional states factor indicating that, in our population, these differences lead to a more helpful rather than avoidant behavior.

Self- or familiar-face recognition advantage? New insight using ambient images

Self-face recognition has been widely explored in the past few years. Nevertheless, the current literature relies on the use of standardized photographs which do not represent daily-life face recognition. Therefore, we aim for the first time to evaluate self-face processing in healthy individuals using natural/ambient images which contain variations in the environment and in the face itself. In total, 40 undergraduate and graduate students performed a forced delayed-matching task, including images of one's own face, friend, famous and unknown individuals. For both reaction time and accuracy, results showed that participants were faster and more accurate when matching different images of their own face compared to both famous and unfamiliar faces. Nevertheless, no significant differences were found between self-face and friend-face and between friend-face and famous-face. They were also faster and more accurate when matching friend and famous faces compared to unfamiliar faces. Our results suggest that faster and more accurate responses to self-face might be better explained by a familiarity effect - that is, (1) the result of frequent exposition to one's own image through mirror and photos, (2) a more robust mental representation of one's own face and (3) strong face recognition units as for other familiar faces.

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.

Neural responses to one's own name under mortality threat

Recent behavioral research has shown evidence for greater inclination to avoid symbolic cues of mortality threats in nonbelievers than Christians. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying religious influences on behavioral tendency to avoid mortality threats remain unknown. We tested the hypothesis of distinct arousal/attention-related brain responses to self-related information under mortality in nonbelievers and Christians. We recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from Christians and nonbelievers while they viewed their own names and a stranger's name (i.e., Zuma) that flashed around a cue word (i.e., death, pain or life) located at the center of a screen. While own name vs. a stranger's name induced faster responses and larger P3 amplitudes, the P3 amplitudes to own name showed distinct patterns of modulations by the cue words in nonbelievers and Christians. Specifically, own name elicited larger P3 amplitudes in the death than pain/life cue conditions in nonbelievers but not in Christians. Moreover, the differential P3 amplitude to own names in the death vs. life cue conditions predicted greater inclination to avoid mortality threats in nonbelievers but not in Christians. Our findings provide a neurocognitive account of increased behavioral tendency to avoid mortality threats in nonbelievers than in Christians.

Self-Construal Priming Modulates Self-Evaluation under Social Threat

Previous studies have shown that Westerners evaluate themselves in an especially flattering way when faced with a social-evaluative threat. The current study first investigated whether East Asians also have a similar pattern by recruiting Chinese participants and using social-evaluative threat manipulations in which participants perform self-evaluation tasks while adopting different social-evaluative feedbacks (Experiment 1). Then further examined whether the different response patterns can be modulated by different types of self-construal by using social-evaluative threat manipulations in conjunction with a self-construal priming task (Experiment 2). The results showed that, as opposed to Westerners' pattern, Chinese participants rated themselves as having significantly greater above-average effect only when faced with the nonthreatening feedback but not the social-evaluative threat. More importantly, we found that self-construal modulated the self-evaluation under social-evaluative threat: following independent self-construal priming, participants tended to show a greater above-average effect when faced with a social-evaluative threat. However, this pattern in conjunction with a social threat disappeared after participants received interdependent self-construal priming or neutral priming. These findings suggest that the effects of social-evaluative threat on self-evaluation are not culturally universal and is strongly modulated by self-construal priming.

Importance Modulates the Temporal Features of Self-Referential Processing: An Event-Related Potential Study

A growing number of studies have demonstrated preferential processing of self-related information. However, previous research has been limited in examining the distinction between processes related to the self and those related to the non-self, it remains unclear how self-related information with differing levels of importance is processed within the self. The present study examined how the importance of self-related content affects the neural activity involved in self-referential processing. The behavioral results showed that the participants had faster responses to more important self-related content. The event-related potential (ERP) results showed that early attention resources were diverted to the identification of highly important self-related content compared with minimally important self-related content, as reflected by the enhanced P200. Furthermore, the N200 amplitude for highly important self-related content was smaller than for moderately important self-related content which, in turn, were smaller than minimally important self-related content. Moreover, the P300 amplitudes were modulated by the degree of importance of self-related content, whereby a higher importance of self-related content led to larger P300 amplitudes. Taken together, these findings demonstrate an effect of the degree of importance of the self-related content at both behavioral and neurophysiological levels.

Self-Reference Emerges Earlier than Emotion during an Implicit Self-Referential Emotion Processing Task: Event-Related Potential Evidence

Self-referential emotion refers to the process of evaluating emotional stimuli with respect to the self. Processes indicative of a self-positivity bias are reflected in electroencephalogram (EEG) signals at ~400 ms when the task does not require a discrimination of self from other. However, when distinguishing between self-referential and other-referential emotions is required, previous studies have shown inconsistent temporal dynamics of EEG signals in slightly different tasks. Based on the observation of early self–other discrimination, we hypothesized that self would be rapidly activated in the early stage to modulate emotional processing in the late stage during an implicit self-referential emotion. To test this hypothesis, we employed an implicit task in which participants were asked to judge the order of Chinese characters of trait adjectives preceded by a self (“I”) or other pronoun (“He” or “She”). This study aimed to explore the difference of social-related emotional evaluation from self-reference; the other pronoun was not defined to a specific person, rather it referred to the general concept. Sixteen healthy Chinese subjects participated in the experiment. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed that there were self-other discrimination effects in the N1 (80–110 ms) and P1 (170–200 ms) components in the anterior brain. The emotional valence was discriminated in the later component of N2 (220–250 ms). The interaction between self-reference and emotional valence occurred during the late positive potential (LPP; 400–500 ms). Moreover, there was a positive correlation between response time (RT) and N1 in the self-reference condition based on the positive-negative contrast, suggesting a modulatory effect of the self-positivity bias. The results indicate that self-reference emerges earlier than emotion and then combines with emotional processing in an implicit task. The findings extend the view that the self plays a highly integrated and modulated role in self-referential emotion processing.

Self-esteem Modulates the P3 Component in Response to the Self-face Processing after Priming with Emotional Faces

The self-face processing advantage (SPA) refers to the research finding that individuals generally recognize their own face faster than another’s face; self-face also elicits an enhanced P3 amplitude compared to another’s face. It has been suggested that social evaluation threats could weaken the SPA and that self-esteem could be regarded as a threat buffer. However, little research has directly investigated the neural evidence of how self-esteem modulates the social evaluation threat to the SPA. In the current event-related potential study, 27 healthy Chinese undergraduate students were primed with emotional faces (angry, happy, or neutral) and were asked to judge whether the target face (self, friend, and stranger) was familiar or unfamiliar. Electrophysiological results showed that after priming with emotional faces (angry and happy), self-face elicited similar P3 amplitudes to friend-face in individuals with low self-esteem, but not in individuals with high self-esteem. The results suggest that as low self-esteem raises fears of social rejection and exclusion, priming with emotional faces (angry and happy) can weaken the SPA in low self-esteem individuals but not in high self-esteem individuals.

Mirror self-face perception in individuals with schizophrenia: Feelings of strangeness associated with one's own image

Self-face recognition is crucial for sense of identity and for maintaining a coherent sense of self. Most of our daily life experiences with the image of our own face happen when we look at ourselves in the mirror. However, to date, mirror self-perception in schizophrenia has received little attention despite evidence that face recognition deficits and self abnormalities have been described in schizophrenia. Thus, this study aims to investigate mirror self-face perception in schizophrenia patients and its correlation with clinical symptoms. Twenty-four schizophrenia patients and twenty-five healthy controls were explicitly requested to describe their image in detail during 2min whilst looking at themselves in a mirror. Then, they were asked to report whether they experienced any self-face recognition difficulties. Results showed that schizophrenia patients reported more feelings of strangeness towards their face compared to healthy controls (U=209.5, p=0.048, r=0.28), but no statistically significant differences were found regarding misidentification (p=0.111) and failures in recognition (p=0.081). Symptoms such as hallucinations, somatic concerns and depression were also associated with self-face perception abnormalities (all p-values>0.05). Feelings of strangeness toward one's own face in schizophrenia might be part of a familiar face perception deficit or a more global self-disturbance, which is characterized by a loss of self-other boundaries and has been associated with abnormal body experiences and first rank symptoms. Regarding this last hypothesis, multisensorial integration might have an impact on the way patients perceive themselves since it has an important role in mirror self-perception.

Disowning the Self: The Cultural Value of Modesty can Attenuate Self-Positivity

Western participants endorse a higher number of positive traits as self-descriptive, but endorse a lower number of negative traits as self-descriptive. They also respond quicker to categorize positive traits as self-descriptive, but respond slower to categorize negative traits as self-descriptive. Is this self-positivity bias qualified by the cultural value of modesty? We induced modesty (vs. punctuality) and assessed self-descriptiveness judgments and response times among Chinese participants. We replicated the self-positivity bias in regards to both self-descriptiveness judgments and response times. In the case of self-descriptiveness judgments, however, the bias was partially qualified by modesty. Relative to control participants, those in the modesty condition endorsed fewer positive traits as self-descriptive and manifested a tendency toward endorsing more negative traits as self-descriptive. In the case of response times, the self-positivity bias was unqualified by modesty. Within both conditions, participants were quicker to categorize positive traits as self-descriptive and were slower to categorize negative traits as self-descriptive. The results speak to the relation between the self-positivity bias and the self-reference effect and illustrate the malleability of self-processing.

Diversity and representation: Key issues for psychophysiological science

This Special Issue is devoted to the illustration and discussion of three key demographic variables (sex/gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status) that have been shown to moderate associations between psychophysiological processes and behavior. The introduction to the issue discusses the role of phenotypic plasticity in the emergence of different neural processes that achieve the same behavioral outcome, with emphasis on how these relatively stable developmental contexts affect brain/behavior associations without necessarily resulting in difference in behavior. These findings have profound significance for the implications of generalization and call into question the presumption that diverse samples produce an average result that is appropriately reflective of the individuals themselves. Increasing diversity within psychophysiological research is critical in elucidating mechanisms by which the human brain can accomplish cognitive and affective behaviors. This article further examines the logistical and ethical challenges faced in achieving this goal.

Decentering the Self? Reduced Bias in Self- vs. Other-Related Processing in Long-Term Practitioners of Loving-Kindness Meditation

Research in social neuroscience provides increasing evidence that self and other are interconnected, both on a conceptual and on an affective representational level. Moreover, the ability to recognize the other as "like the self" is thought to be essential for social phenomena like empathy and compassion. Meditation practices such as loving-kindness meditation (LKM) have been found to enhance these capacities. Therefore, we investigated whether LKM is associated to an increased integration of self-other-representations. As an indicator, we assessed the P300 event-related potential elicited by oddball stimuli of the self-face and a close other's face in 12 long-term practitioners of LKM and 12 matched controls. In line with previous studies, the self elicited larger P300 amplitudes than close other. This effect was reduced in the meditation sample at parietal but not frontal midline sites. Within this group, smaller differences between self- and other-related P300 were associated with increasing meditation practice. Across groups, smaller P300 differences correlated with self-reported compassion. In meditators, we also investigated the effect of a short LKM compared to a control priming procedure in order to test whether the state induction would additionally modulate self- vs. other-related P300. However, no effect of the priming conditions was observed. Overall, our findings provide preliminary evidence that prolonged meditation practice may modulate self- vs. other-related processing, accompanied by an increase in compassion. Further evidence is needed, however, to show if this is a direct outcome of loving-kindness meditation.

Eighteen-month-old infants show distinct electrophysiological responses to their own faces

Infants attain the developmental milestone of self-recognition around 18 to 24 months of age. At 18 months of age, half of the infant population typically shows signs of self-recognition in the classic mirror test. The current study examined the functional neural correlates of the perception of self in infancy. Eighteen-month-old infants observed photographs of their own face, the face of an unfamiliar infant, the face of their caregiver, and the face of an unfamiliar caregiver, while their EEG was registered. The results show that infants show an enhanced response to their own face compared to other faces. The N290, an established face-selective ERP component in infants, was larger for observation of their own face compared to others' faces. In addition to the EEG task, the mirror test was administered. Half of the infants in our sample recognized themselves in the mirror. However, there were no differences in the ERP responses between the infants who did and did not recognize themselves in the mirror. This suggests that a distinction between the neural response to self and to others does not necessarily express itself in self-recognition behavior.

More of me! Distinguishing self and reward bias using redundancy gains

Participants show a perceptual bias favoring stimuli associated with the participants themselves over stimuli associated with other people. A major account of this self-bias effect is that self-related information is intrinsically rewarding, and that high-reward stimuli have enhanced perceptual processing. Here we used redundancy gains to examine the relations between self bias and reward, and whether self and reward biases modulate common levels of stimulus integration. We demonstrated that the self-association bias increases when more than one exemplar of the stimulus is presented (i.e., when participants are exposed to redundant stimuli). The larger self-bias effects for redundant than for single stimuli arose at both perceptual and conceptual levels of representation (respectively, for identical and nonidentical stimuli associated with the same category). In contrast, high-reward stimuli did not affect perceptual redundancy gains with identical shapes, but they did affect redundancy gains with nonidentical stimuli associated with the same category. The strong redundancy effects with self-related stimuli are consistent with self associations modulating stimulus integration at both perceptual and conceptual levels, whereas reward only modulated higher-level conceptual processes (with nonidentical stimuli). The data provide two novel theoretical advances, by showing that (i) self association modulates both early perceptual coding and higher-level conceptual coding, whereas reward only affects the higher-level process, and (ii) self bias can not be reduced simply to differential effects of reward.

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.

Cultural Differences in Perceiving Sounds Generated by Others: Self Matters

Sensory consequences resulting from own movements receive different neural processing compared to externally generated sensory consequences (e.g., by a computer), leading to sensory attenuation, i.e., a reduction in perceived intensity or brain evoked responses. However, discrepant findings exist from different cultural regions about whether sensory attenuation is also present for sensory consequences generated by others. In this study, we performed a cross culture (between Chinese and British) comparison on the processing of sensory consequences (perceived loudness) from self and others compared to an external source in the auditory domain. We found a cultural difference in processing sensory consequences generated by others, with only Chinese and not British showing the sensory attenuation effect. Sensory attenuation in this case was correlated with independent self-construal scores. The sensory attenuation effect for self-generated sensory consequences was not replicated. However, a correlation with delusional ideation was observed for British. These findings are discussed with respects to mechanisms of sensory attenuation.

The differential outcomes procedure can overcome self-bias in perceptual matching

There are biases in perceptual matching between shapes and labels referring to familiar others, compared with when the labels refer to unfamiliar people. We assessed whether these biases could be affected by differential feedback (using the differential outcomes procedure [DOP]) compared with when feedback is provided using a nondifferential outcomes procedure (NOP). Participants formed associations between simple geometric shapes and labels referring to people the participant did or did not know (self, best friend, other). Subsequently, the task was to match a label to one of two shapes shown on a trial. When feedback for correct responses was given following the NOP condition, matches were faster to known people (self and friend) compared with those to an unknown person (stranger). However, this advantage for known personal relations was eliminated when participants were given feedback for correct responses following the DOP condition. The data are consistent with prior work showing that the DOP can facilitate the learning of taxing associations (for the stranger stimuli relative to the familiar self and friend stimuli). In addition, the results suggest that the facilitated perceptual matching for stimuli associated to individuals known personally may reflect better individuation of the association between the shape stimulus and the label, a process enhanced by using a DOP for associations with unfamiliar people.

Culture Wires the Brain: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

There is clear evidence that sustained experiences may affect both brain structure and function. Thus, it is quite reasonable to posit that sustained exposure to a set of cultural experiences and behavioral practices will affect neural structure and function. The burgeoning field of cultural psychology has often demonstrated the subtle differences in the way individuals process information-differences that appear to be a product of cultural experiences. We review evidence that the collectivistic and individualistic biases of East Asian and Western cultures, respectively, affect neural structure and function. We conclude that there is limited evidence that cultural experiences affect brain structure and considerably more evidence that neural function is affected by culture, particularly activations in ventral visual cortex-areas associated with perceptual processing.

Dynamically orienting your own face facilitates the automatic attraction of attention

We report two experiments showing that dynamically orienting our own face facilitates the automatic attraction of attention. We had participants complete a cueing task where they had to judge the orientation of a lateralized target cued by a central face that dynamically changed its orientation. Experiment 1 showed a reliable cueing effect from both self- and friend-faces at a long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), however, the self-faces exclusively generated a spatial cueing effect at a short SOA. In Experiment 2, event-related potential (ERP) data to the face cues showed larger amplitudes in the N1 component for self-faces relative to friend- and unfamiliar-faces. In contrast, the amplitude of the P3 component was reduced for self compared with friend- and unfamiliar-other cues. The size of the self-bias effect in N1 correlated with the strength of self-biases in P3. The results indicate that dynamic changes in the orientation of one’s own face can provide a strong ecological cue for attention, enhancing sensory responses (N1) and reducing any subsequent uncertainty (P3) in decision-making.

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

The perceptual matching of shapes and labels can be affected by both self- and reward-biases when shapes are linked either to labels referring to particular individuals (you, friend, stranger) or to different reward values (£8, £2, £0). We investigated the relations between these biases by varying the reward value associated with particular shape-label pairs (circle-you, square-friend, triangle-stranger). Self shape-label pairs (circle-you) always received no reward, while friend shape-label pairs (square-friend) received high reward and stranger shape-label pairs low reward (triangle-stranger), or the reverse (friend-low reward; stranger-high reward). Despite receiving no reward, responses to self-related pairs were advantaged relative to those to low-reward stimuli and did not differ from those to high-reward items. There was also an advantage for responses to high-reward friend pairs relative to low-reward stranger stimuli, and for high-reward stranger stimuli compared to low-reward friends. Correlations across individuals were found across trial blocks for both the self-advantage and the high-reward advantage, but the self- and reward-advantages were uncorrelated. This suggests that the self- and reward-advantage effects have different origins. In addition, the magnitude of the self-advantage varied according to the rated personal distance between a participant and a stranger. For individuals manifesting a close personal distance to strangers, the self-advantage was smaller, and sensitivity to reward influenced the difference between the self- and high-reward conditions. For individuals manifesting a large personal distance to strangers, sensitivity to reward did not affect self-matching. We suggest that self-advantages on perceptual matching arise independent of reward for individuals with a large personal distance to strangers. On the other hand, in individuals with a weak self-bias, high reward and the self modulate a common subjective value system.

Affective reactions differ between Chinese and American healthy young adults: a cross-cultural study using the international affective picture system

BACKGROUND

Several cross-cultural studies have suggested that emotions are influenced by the cultural background. Emotional reactions to International Affective Picture System (IAPS) images were compared between Chinese and American young adults.

METHODS

120 Chinese undergraduates (53 females, 67 males; aged 18-25 years) were enrolled at Zhejiang University, China, and the valence and arousal components of their emotional responses to IAPS images were rated using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) system. Then, valence and arousal scores were compared to those of 100 American undergraduates (50 females, 50 males) of the same age group, enrolled at Florida University and surveyed by Prof. PJ Lang in 2001.

RESULTS

Valence scores assigned to 259/816 (31.74%) pictures differed significantly between Chinese and American female participants, while those assigned to 165/816 (20.22%) pictures differed significantly between Chinese and American males (P < 6 × 10(-5)). Of the 816 pictures, the arousal scores assigned to 101/816 (12.38%) pictures differed significantly between Chinese and American female participants; these scores significantly differed in 130/816 (15.93%) pictures between Chinese and American males (P < 6 × 10(-5)). Valence scores for pictures in the Erotic category differed significantly between Chinese and American females (P < 6 × 10(-5)). There were no significant differences in valence scores for the remaining eight categories studied between participants from the two countries, whether female or male.

CONCLUSIONS

The IAPS norms require a modification for their appropriate application in Asian cultures.