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When "it" becomes "mine": attentional biases triggered by object ownership
David J Turk1, Kim van Bussel, Joanne L Brebner
1School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK. david.j.turk@abdn.ac.uk
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
|August 5, 2011
Summary
Self-relevance enhances attentional processing, even for common objects. Taking ownership of items, like personal possessions, triggers immediate cognitive and perceptual attention shifts.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychology
Background:
- Self-relevant stimuli, such as one's name or face, engage higher-order cognitive processes.
- Previous research suggests attention is heightened for familiar self-related items.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if attentional processing effects are triggered in real-time upon establishing self-relevance.
- To determine if ownership paradigms elicit immediate self-relevance effects on attention.
Main Methods:
- Electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded.
- Participants viewed common objects within an ownership paradigm.
- Ownership was cued as either 'self' or 'other' after object presentation.
Main Results:
- Experiment 1: 'Self' ownership cues increased attentional processing, indicated by the P300 ERP component.
- Experiment 2: Replicated the P300 effect and showed narrowed spatial attention for self-owned objects (P1 ERP component).
Conclusions:
- Self-relevant attention effects are initiated immediately upon taking ownership.
- These effects influence both perceptual and postperceptual processing stages in the brain.
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