Abstract
It is well documented that stimuli associated with the self are easier to process than identical material paired with other people (i.e., self-prioritization effect). Surprisingly, however, relatively little is known about how self-relevance impacts core aspects of executive functioning, notably response inhibition. Accordingly, here we used a stop-signal task to establish how effectively responses toward self-relevant (vs. other-relevant) stimuli can intentionally be inhibited. In the context of personalpossession, participants were required to classify stimuli (i.e., pens & pencils) based on ownership (i.e., owned-by-self vs. owned-by-friend/stranger), unless an occasional auditory tone indicated that the response should be withheld. The results revealed the benefits of self-relevance on response inhibition.Compared with items owned by a friend or stranger, responses to self-owned objects were inhibited more efficiently. These findings confirm that self-relevance facilitates executive control.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1416-1423 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Attention, Perception & Psychophysics |
Volume | 83 |
Early online date | 4 Mar 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 4 Mar 2021 |
Keywords
- self
- response inhibition
- ownership
- executive control