The self and a close-other: differences between processing of faces and newly acquired information

Abstract

Prioritization of self-related information (e.g. self-face) may be driven by its extreme familiarity. Nevertheless, the findings of numerous behavioral studies reported a self-preference for initially unfamiliar information, arbitrarily associated with the self. In the current study, we investigated the neural underpinnings of extremely familiar stimuli (self-face, close-other's face) and stimuli newly assigned to one's own person and to a close-other (abstract shapes). Control conditions consisted of unknown faces and unknown abstract shapes. Reaction times (RTs) to the self-face were shorter than to close-other's and unknown faces, whereas no RTs differences were observed for shapes. P3 amplitude to the self-face was larger than to close-other's and unknown faces. Nonparametric cluster-based permutation tests showed significant clusters for the self-face vs. other (close-other's, unknown) faces. However, in the case of shapes P3 amplitudes to the self-assigned shape and to the shape assigned to a close-other were similar, and both were larger than P3 to unknown shapes. No cluster was detected for the self-assigned shape when compared with the shape assigned to the close-other. Thus, our findings revealed preferential attentional processing of the self-face and the similar allocation of attentional resources to shapes assigned to the self and a close-other.

Keywords: ERP; attention; familiarity; saliency; self-preference.

Fig. 1

Shapes used in the present study. The area of each shape was the same and was equal to the area of the face oval.

Fig. 2

Schematic presentation of the experimental procedure. Three types of faces (self, close-other’s, unknown) and three types of shapes (self-assigned, assigned to the close-other, unknown) were intermixed and presented pseudo-randomly. Participants were supposed to indicate whether a stimulus was familiar or not. The example image of a self-face is a photograph of one of the co-authors.

Fig. 3

(A) Topographical distribution of brain activity averaged across the two types of stimuli (faces, shape) and across all experimental conditions (self, close-other, unknown) and (B) a butterfly plot presenting grand-average ERPs for all (collapsed) experimental conditions, at all 62 active electrodes.

Fig. 4

Behavioral results. (A) Mean (± SD) accuracy scores and (B) mean (± SD) RTs for faces and shapes.

Fig. 5

Grand-average ERPs for (A) faces and (B) shapes, pooled for four electrodes: CP1, CPz, CP2, and Pz. The analyzed time window is marked by light-blue rectangles.

Fig. 6

The results of cluster-based permutation tests for faces. (A) Self-face compared to close-other and (B) unknown faces, (C) close-other face compared to unknown faces. Statistically significant positive differences between conditions are indicated in red (P < 0.05).

Fig. 7

The results of cluster-based permutation tests for shapes. The self-assigned shape compared to the shape assigned to (A) the close-other and (B) unknown shapes, and (C) the shape assigned to the close-other compared to unknown shapes. Statistically significant positive differences between conditions are indicated in red (P < 0.05).