When "It" becomes "Mine": attentional biases triggered by object ownership.

David J Turk, Kim van Bussel, Joanne Brebner, Andreea Toma, Olave Krigolson, Todd Handy

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

92 Citations (Scopus)
803 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that higher-order cog- nitive processes associated with the allocation of selective atten- tion are engaged when highly familiar self-relevant items are encountered, such as oneðs name, face, personal possessions and the like. The goal of our study was to determine whether these effects on attentional processing are triggered on-line at the moment self-relevance is established. In a pair of experi- ments, we recorded ERPs as participants viewed common ob- jects (e.g., apple, socks, and ketchup) in the context of an “ownership” paradigm, where the presentation of each object was followed by a cue indicating whether the object nominally belonged either to the participant (a “self” cue) or the experi- menter (an “other” cue). In Experiment 1, we found that “self” ownership cues were associated with increased attentional pro- cessing, as measured via the P300 component. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect while demonstrating that at a visual– perceptual level, spatial attention became more narrowly fo- cused on objects owned by self, as measured via the lateral occipital P1 ERP component. Taken together, our findings indi- cate that self-relevant attention effects are triggered by the act of taking ownership of objects associated with both perceptual and postperceptual processing in cortex.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3725-3733
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Volume23
Issue number12
Early online date2 Nov 2011
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2011

Research Groups and Themes

  • Cognitive Science

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