The HisMine-paradigm: a new paradigm to investigate self-awareness employing pronouns

Self-related stimuli such as the own name have been used to investigate self-awareness. The present study investigates a novel paradigm employing personal and possessive self-referential and non-self-referential pronouns (SRPs and NSRPs). Going beyond previous research, the robustness of the previously demonstrated self-reference effect was investigated for personal as well as possessive SRPs under passive and active processing conditions using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as outcome measures. ERPs were recorded from 33 healthy participants during the presentation of SRPs "ich" and "mein" (German for "I"/"my") and NSRPs "er" and "sein" ("he"/"his"). Additionally, the role of the second person perspective (2PP) pronouns "du" and "dein" ("you"/"your") was explored. Stimuli were presented in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) design at frequencies of 2.5 and 1 Hz including a passive reading and two active counting instructions. The results demonstrate that SRPs were spontaneously processed preferentially compared to NSRPs during an initial processing stage. SRPs moreover specifically benefitted from allocation of attention during later processing stages. These results suggest that processes during which a stimulus is related to oneself or others take place very early. Differences in temporal processing of personal and possessive pronouns were not found.