Self-related information is under many circumstances processed in a preferred and biased way, leading to what has been termed the self-prioritisation effect (SPE). The SPE has been demonstrated with arbitrary stimuli assigned to self and others, thereby controlling the influence of familiarity, and originally been attributed to facilitated perceptual processing of self-related stimuli. Subsequent studies, however, casted doubts on this interpretation and suggested further possible sources for the SPE. In the present four experiments, we used the well-established psychological refractory period paradigm together with the locus of slack and the effect propagation logic to pinpoint the source of the SPE. The data consistently demonstrated the SPE across all experiments. More important, the results converge on the notion that the SPE has its source in a capacity-limited stage of central processing. The implications of these results are discussed in light of possible candidate processes as sources for the SPE, such as memory-related processing.
BrissonB.JolicoeurP. (2007). A psychological refractory period in access to visual short-term memory and the deployment of visual–spatial attention: Multitasking processing deficits revealed by event-related potentials. Psychophysiology, 44, 323–333.
2.
Dell’AcquaR.JobR.PeressottiF.PascaliA. (2007). The picture-work interference effect is not a Stroop effect. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 717–722.
3.
DurstM.JanczykM. (2018). The motor locus of the no-go based backward crosstalk. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/xlm0000565
4.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.LangA. G.BuchnerA. (2007). G* Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–119.
5.
FringsC.WenturaD. (2014). Self-priorization processes in action and perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 40, 1737–1740.
6.
FuentesL. J.SuiJ.EstévezA. F.HumphreysG. W. (2015). The differential outcomes procedure can overcome self-bias in perceptual matching. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23, 451–458.
7.
GarnerW. R. (1978). Selective attention to attributes and to stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 107, 287–308.
8.
GronauN.CohenA.Ben-ShakharG. (2003). Dissociations of personally significant and task-relevant distractors inside and outside the focus of attention: A combined behavioral and psychophysiological study.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 512–529.
9.
JanczykM. (2013). Level 2 perspective taking entails two processes: Evidence from PRP experiments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39, 1878–1887.
10.
JanczykM. (2017). A common capacity limitation for response and item selection in working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43, 1690–1698.
11.
JanczykM.FranzV. H.KundeW. (2010). Grasping for parsimony: Do some motor actions escape dorsal processing?Neuropsychologia, 48, 3405–3415.
12.
JanczykM.KundeW. (2010). Does dorsal processing require central capacity? More evidence from the PRP paradigm. Experimental Brain Research, 203, 89–100.
13.
JanczykM.PfisterR.WallmeierG.KundeW. (2014). Exceptions from the PRP effect? A comparison of prepared and unconditioned reflexes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40, 776–786.
14.
JanczykM.RenasS.DurstM. (2018). Identifying the locus of compatibility-based backward crosstalk: Evidence from an extended PRP paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44, 261–276.
15.
JohnstonJ. J.McCannR. S. (2006). On the locus of dual-task interference: Is there a bottleneck at the stimulus classification stage?The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 694–719.
16.
JolicoeurP.Dell’AcquaR. (1998). The demonstration of short-term consolidation. Cognitive Psychology, 36, 138–202.
17.
KeenanJ. P.McCutcheonB.SandersG.FreundS.GallupG. G.Pascual-LeoneA. (1999). Left hand advantage in a self-face recognition task. Neuropsychologia, 37, 1421–1425.
18.
KeyesH.BradyN. (2010). Self-face recognition is characterized by “bilateral gain” and by faster, more accurate performance which persists with faces are inverted. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 840–847.
19.
KlapötkeS.KrügerD.MattlerU. (2011). A PRP-study to determine the locus of target priming effects. Consciousness and Cognition, 20, 882–900.
20.
KleinS. B.LoftusJ.BurtonH. A. (1989). Two self-reference effects: The importance of distinguishing between self-descriptiveness judgments and autobiographical retrieval in self-referent encoding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 853–865.
21.
KundeW.PfisterR.JanczykM. (2012). The locus of tool-transformation costs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 703–714.
22.
LiuM.HeX.RotshteinP.SuiJ. (2016). Dynamically orienting your own face facilitates the automatic attraction of attention. Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 37–44.
23.
LoganG. D.DelheimerJ. A. (2001). Parallel memory retrieval in dual-task situations: II. Episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 668–685.
24.
LoganG. D.SchulkindM. D. (2000). Parallel memory retrieval in dual-task situations: I. Semantic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 1072–1090.
25.
MacraeC. N.VisokomogilskiA.GolubickisM.CunninghamW. A.SahraieA. (2017). Self-relevance prioritizes access to visual awareness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43, 438–443.
26.
MassonM. E. J. (2011). A tutorial on a practical Bayesian alternative to null-hypothesis testing. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 679–690.
27.
MillerJ.ReynoldsA. (2003). The locus of redundant-targets and non-targets effects: Evidence from the psychological refractory period paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29, 1126–1142.
28.
NavonD.MillerJ. (2002). Cueing or sharing? A critical evaluation of the single-bottleneck notion. Cognitive Psychology, 44, 193–251.
29.
PaeleckeM.KundeW. (2007). Action-effect codes in and before the central bottleneck: Evidence from the PRP paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33, 627–644.
30.
PashlerH. (1994). Dual-task interference in simple tasks: Data and theory. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 220–244.
31.
PashlerH.JohnstonJ. C. (1989). Chronometric evidence for central postponement in temporally overlapping tasks. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 41, 19–45.
ReimerC. B.StrobachT.FrenschP.SchubertT. (2015). Are processing limitations of visual attention and response selection subject to the same bottleneck in dual-tasks?Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 774, 1052–1069.
34.
ReimerC. B.StrobachT.SchubertT. (2017). Concurrent deployment of visual attention and response selection bottleneck in a dual-task: Electrophysiological and behavioural evidence. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70, 2460–2477. doi:10.1080/17470218.2016.1245348
35.
ReutherJ.ChakravathiR. (2017). Does self-prioritization affect perceptual processes?Visual Cognition, 25, 381–398.
SchweickertR. (1978). A critical path generalization of the additive factor method: Analysis of a Stroop task. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 18, 105–139.
38.
SteinT.SieboldA.van ZoestW. (2016). Testing the idea of privileged awareness of self-relevant information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 42, 303–307.
39.
SternbergS. (1969). The discovery of processing stages: Extensions of Donders’ method. Acta Psychologica, 30, 276–315.
40.
StrobachT.SchützA.SchubertT. (2015). On the importance of Task 1 and error performance measures in PRP dual-task studies. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 403.
41.
SuiJ.HeX.HumphreysG. W. (2012). Perceptual effects of social salience: Evidence from self-prioritization effects on perceptual matching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 1105–1117.
42.
SuiJ.HumphreysG. W. (2013). Self-referential processing is distinct from semantic elaboration: Evidence from long-term memory effects in a patient with amnesia and semantic impairments. Neuropsychologia, 51, 2663–2673.
43.
SuiJ.HumphreysG. W. (2015). The integrative self: How self-reference integrates perception and memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19, 719–728.
44.
SuiJ.HumphreysG. W. (2017). Aging enhances cognitive biases to friends but not the self. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24, 2021–2030. doi:10.3758/s13423-017-1264-1
45.
SuiJ.RotshteinP.HumphreysG. W. (2013). Coupling social attention to the self forms a network for personal significance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110, 7607–7612.
46.
SuiJ.YankouskayaA.HumphreysG. W. (2015). Super-capacity and violations of race independence for self- but not for reward-associated stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41, 441–452.
47.
SunY.FuentesL. J.HumphreysG. W.SuiJ. (2016). Try to see it my way: Domain-specific embodiment enhances self and friend-biases in perceptual matching. Cognition, 153, 108–117.
48.
SymonsC. S.JohnsonB. T. (1997). The self-reference effect in memory: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 371–394.
49.
TelfordC. W. (1931). The refractory phase of voluntary and associative responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 14, 1–36.
50.
TombuM.JolicoeurP. (2003). A central capacity dharing model of dual-task performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29, 3–18.
51.
WagenmakersE. -J. (2007). A practical solution to the pervasive problems of p values. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 779–804.
52.
WelfordA. T. (1952). The “psychological refractory period” and the timing of high-speed performance—A review and a theory. British Journal of Psychology, 43, 2–19.
53.
WieckiT. V.SoferI.FrankM. J. (2013). HDDM: Hierarchical Bayesian estimation of the drift-diffusion model in python. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 7, 14. doi:10.3389/fninf.2013.00014
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
