Self-bias modulates saccadic control

The relationship between self, value-based reward, and emotion prioritisation effects

People show systematic biases in perception, memory, attention, and decision-making to prioritise information related to self, reward, and positive emotion. A long-standing set of experimental findings points towards putative common properties of these effects. However, the relationship between them remains largely unknown. Here, we addressed this question by assessing and linking these prioritisation effects generated by a common associative matching procedure in three experiments. Self, reward, and positive emotion prioritisation effects were assessed using cluster and shift function analyses to explore and test associations between these effects across individuals. Cluster analysis revealed two distinct patterns of the relationship between the biases. Individuals with faster responses showed a smaller reward and linear positive association between reward and emotion biases. Individuals with slower responses demonstrated a large reward and no association between reward and emotion biases. No evidence of the relationship between self and value-based reward or positive emotion prioritisation effects was found among the clusters. A shift function indicated a partial dominance of high-reward over low-reward distributions at later processing stages in participants with slower but not faster responses. Full stochastic dominance of self-relevance over others and positive over neutral emotion was pertinent to each subgroup of participants. Our findings suggest the independent origin of the self-prioritisation effect. In contrast, commonalities in cognitive mechanisms supporting value-based reward and positive emotion processing are subject to individual differences. These findings add important evidence to a steadily growing research base about the relationship between basic behavioural drivers.

Exploring the Social Environment with the Eyes: A Review of the Impact of Facial Stimuli on Saccadic Trajectories

Eye movement parameters can be highly informative regarding how people explore the social environment around them. This theoretical review examines how human faces and their features (e.g., eye-gaze direction, emotional expressions) can modulate saccadic trajectories. In the first part, studies in which facial stimuli were presented in a central location, such as during a face-to-face social interaction, are illustrated. The second part focuses on studies in which facial stimuli were placed in the periphery. Together, these works confirm the presence of an intriguing link between eye movements and facial processing, and invite consideration of saccadic trajectories as a useful (and still underused) opportunity to track ongoing mechanisms that support the social vision. Some directions for future research are also discussed.

Self-Prioritization Effect in Children and Adults

Self-related information is processed with priority, an effect known as the self-prioritization effect (SPE). Recent studies on SPE show enhanced cognitive processing of the newly learned self-association compared to non-self (such as mother, friend, and stranger) associations among younger and older adults. However, developmental influences on the magnitude of SPE remain poorly understood. In order to examine the developmental impacts on the SPE, in the present study, we recruited participants ranging from 9–22 years of age and divided them into three age groups: older children (age 9–13), teenagers (age 14–17), and young adult (age 18–22) and compared their performance in the matching judgment task. Our results show more significant bias toward self than mother, friend, or stranger condition in all the three age groups, showing robust SPE in the 9-22-year-old age group. We also observed a more significant bias toward mother-association than friend and stranger-association in all the age groups showing an enhanced bias toward mother. Our study extends the SPE in older children and teenagers and shows that SPE remains robust and stable throughout childhood.

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

Attention is influenced by information about relationships between ourselves and the objects around us. Self-related objects can either facilitate or disrupt task performance, creating a challenge for identifying the precise nature of the influence of self-relatedness on attention. To address this challenge, we measured different components of attention (alertness and orienting) in the presence of self-related objects using a revised attention network task (ANT). In a self-association task, participants first learned colour-person associations and then carried out a colour-person matching task. This was followed by the ANT, in which these coloured boxes associated with self or friend were displayed as peripheral cues; participants had to judge the direction of an arrow flanked by congruent (low-conflict) or incongruent (high-conflict) distractors presented within one coloured box. The results showed faster and more accurate responses to targets appearing within the self-colour than friend-colour cues in the association task. In the ANT, the analysis of alertness revealed that self-related cues facilitated task performance compared with friend-related cues. The analysis of orienting demonstrated that relative to friend cues, self-cues hampered task performance in invalid trials. Critically, the effects of self-cues on both orienting and alertness were observed only in high conflict situations. These results indicated that self-related objects are powerful cues that enhance attention intensity, which either facilitates task performance when the upcoming target falls within their location or disrupts performance when the target falls outside their location. The data suggest that attentional functions can be tuned by self-saliency in high-demand contexts.

Self-prioritization is supported by interactions between large-scale brain networks

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has provided solid evidence that the default-mode network (DMN) is implicated in self-referential processing. The functional connectivity of the DMN has also been observed in tasks where self-referential processing leads to self-prioritization (SPE) in perception and decision-making. However, we are less certain about whether (i) SPE solely depends on the interplay within parts of the DMN or is driven by multiple brain networks; and (ii) whether SPE is associated with a unique component of interconnected networks or can be explained by related effects such as emotion prioritization. We addressed these questions by identifying and comparing topological clusters of networks involved in self-and emotion prioritization effects generated in an associative-matching task. Using network-based statistics, we found that SPE controlled by emotion is supported by a unique component of interacting networks, including the medial prefrontal part of the DMN (MPFC), Frontoparietal network (FPN) and insular Salience network (SN). This component emerged as a result of a focal effect confined to few connections, indicating that interaction between DMN, FPC and SN is critical to cognitive operations for the SPE. This result was validated on a separate data set. In contrast, prioritization of happy emotion was associated with a component formed by interactions between the rostral prefrontal part of SN, posterior parietal part of FPN and the MPFC, while sad emotion reveals a cluster of the DMN, Dorsal Attention Network (DAN) and Visual Medial Network (VMN). We discussed theoretical and methodological aspects of these findings within the more general domain of social cognition.

On stopping yourself: Self-relevance facilitates response inhibition

It is well documented that stimuli associated with the self are easier to process than identical material paired with other people (i.e., self-prioritization effect). Surprisingly, however, relatively little is known about how self-relevance impacts core aspects of executive functioning, notably response inhibition. Accordingly, here we used a stop-signal task to establish how effectively responses toward self-relevant (vs. other-relevant) stimuli can intentionally be inhibited. In the context of personal possession, participants were required to classify stimuli (i.e., pens and pencils) based on ownership (i.e., owned-by-self vs. owned-by-friend/stranger), unless an occasional auditory tone indicated that the response should be withheld. The results revealed the benefits of self-relevance on response inhibition. Compared with items owned by a friend or stranger, responses to self-owned objects were inhibited more efficiently. These findings confirm that self-relevance facilitates executive control.

The effects of self-relevance vs. reward value on facial mimicry

Facial mimicry is a ubiquitous social behaviour modulated by a range of social cues, including those related to reward value and self-relevance. However, previous research has typically focused on a single moderator at a time, and it remains unknown how moderators interact when studied together. We compared the influence of reward value and self-relevance, by conditioning participants to associate certain faces with winning or losing money for themselves, or, with winning or losing money for another person. After conditioning, participants watched videos of these faces making happy and angry facial expressions whilst we recorded facial electromyographic activity. We found greater smile mimicry (activation of the Zygomaticus Major muscle) in response to happy expressions performed by faces associated with participants' own outcomes vs. faces associated with another person's outcomes. In contrast to previous research, whether a face was associated with winning or losing money did not modulate facial mimicry responses. These results, although preliminary, suggest that when faces are associated with both self-relevance and reward value, self-relevance could supersede the impact of reward value during facial mimicry.

Self-related shapes can hold the eyes

Increasing evidence suggests that individuals are highly sensitive to self-related stimuli. Here, we report two experiments conducted to assess whether two schematic stimuli, arbitrarily associated with either the self or a stranger, can shape attention holding in an oculomotor task. In both experiments, participants first completed a manual matching task in which they were asked to associate the self and a stranger with two shapes (triangle vs. square). Then, in an oculomotor task, they were asked to perform a saccade from the centre of the screen towards a peripheral target while either the triangle or the square were centrally presented. In Experiment 1, saccades had to be performed on each trial-irrespective of the central shape-while in Experiment 2, saccades had to be performed only when the central shape was associated with either the self or the stranger, depending on block instruction. Participants were slower to initiate a saccade away from the central shape when this was associated with the self rather than with the stranger, but this pattern of results emerged only in Experiment 2. Overall, these data suggest that stimuli associated with the self through episodic learning can hold attention when the self/other distinction is a task-relevant dimension.