Hearing own or other's name has different effects on monotonous task performance.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Psychophysiology

Background:

• Self-relevant stimuli can influence cognitive processes.
• Understanding the impact of auditory stimuli on attention and arousal is crucial for cognitive performance.
• The Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) is a standard measure of sustained attention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of hearing one's own name versus another's name on vigilant attention, arousal, and sleepiness.
• To determine if self-relevance modulates the impact of auditory stimuli on cognitive performance during the PVT.

Main Methods:

• Participants completed the PVT under three conditions: hearing their own name, hearing another person's name, or a no-stimulus control.
• Auditory stimuli (names) were presented every 20 seconds.
• Self-relevance was measured using a pre-experiment scale.

Main Results:

• Arousal levels increased upon hearing any name, irrespective of its self-relevance.
• Hearing less self-relevant stimuli (e.g., another's name) appeared to have a distracting effect on PVT performance.
• Observed behavioral effects were generally small and not consistently supported across all performance metrics.

Conclusions:

• Auditory stimuli, including names, can non-specifically increase arousal.
• Stimuli with lower self-relevance may impair ongoing task performance by acting as distractors.
• Further research is necessary to fully elucidate the complex interplay between self-relevance, arousal, and attention.