Abstract
Self-relevant material has been shown to be prioritized over stimuli relating to others (e.g., friend, stranger), generating benefits in attention, memory, and decision-making. What is not yet understood, however, is whether the conditions under which self-related knowledge is acquired impacts the emergence of self-bias. To address this matter, here we used an associative-learning paradigm in combination with a stimulus-classification task to explore the effects of different learning experiences (i.e., deterministic vs. probabilistic) on self-prioritization. The results revealed an effect of prior learning on task performance, with self-prioritization only emerging when participants acquired target-related associations (i.e., self vs. friend) under conditions of certainty (vs. uncertainty). A further computational (i.e., drift diffusion model) analysis indicated that differences in the efficiency of stimulus processing (i.e., rate of information uptake) underpinned this self-prioritization effect. The implications of these findings for accounts of self-function are considered
Original language | English |
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Article number | 103602 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Consciousness and Cognition |
Volume | 116 |
Early online date | 10 Nov 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Open Access via the Elsevier agreementFunding: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Data Availability Statement
Available at https://osf.io/dzub9/Keywords
- self
- instrumental learning
- probabilistic selection task
- self-prioritization
- drift diffusion model