Representing The Self And Others

Question 1

Describe the cocktail party effect when Ps perform dichotic listening tasks

Answer 1

Ps can follow a sensible message even when it switches ears; salient information, such as their name can be detected in the unattended ear

Question 2

Attention can be captured by other salient information, especially when it’s positively valenced. But more recent research has shown enhanced memory/decision making to ne driven by what?

Answer 2

Self-referential encoding

Question 3

In Chen and Bargh’s study, they presented positive or negative words and had Ps either pull a lever towards them for good words or push it away for bad words (congruent), or the other way around (incongruent) What was found?

Answer 3

Faster approach responses to positive stimuli, especially in the congruent condition (pulling towards): so movements of the arm are related to people’s evaluations: pulling associated with approaching desired objects and pushing associated with avoiding undesired objects

Question 4

Mark an and Brendl presented Ps with their name either in front of or behind a positive or negative word. In one condition, they had to move a joystick toward their name for positive words and away from if negative, and the opposite (incongruent) in the other condition. What was found?

Answer 4

RTs were faster when pulling positive word towards their name, and faster to push away if negative; suggesting there were positive evaluations towards the extended self (name); we can extend ourselves outward on the environment

Question 5

Sui et al. Paired labels with shapes (e.g. Circle - self; triangle - best friend; square - stranger), and had Ps learn them, and in the test phase determine if the pairs were correct or incorrect as quickly and as accurately as possible. What were the results, and what does this suggest?

Answer 5

They were faster and more accurate when responding to self, followed by friend, then stranger; same effect for non-matching pairs but a little slower; suggests that coupling social attention to the self forms a network for personal significance

Question 6

Compare the neural activations between matched pair self and stranger conditions in Sui et al.’s study

Answer 6

Greater activation in vmPFC (thinking about the self) and left posterior superior temporal sulcus; dorsal attentional network activations for stranger

Question 7

Studies have shown greater activation in the vmPFC when thinking about the self, and almost as much for mother (especially in Asian cultures). What was found when Sui et al. (2014) manipulated probabilities of presenting self, mother and stranger to assess how we deploy our cognitive biases?

Answer 7

RTs were faster for the self, but were almost the same when presented with mother 3 times (compared to 1 for self); also slightly improved for stranger when presented 3 times; shows the self condition is very powerful and to overcome it we must apply more value or training for mother or stranger

Question 8

What did Macrae et al. find about traits that are judged to be self-relevant, compared to non-self relevant?

Answer 8

Greater activation in mPFC and recalled better for self-relevant traits; more activation in ACC and less recollection for non self-relevant, suggesting a dissociation

Question 9

What did Cunningham et al. find when exploring the effects of ownership and choice on self-memory biases?

Answer 9

Stronger memory recognition responses for self-owned items an other-owned items (recalled faster and more accurately)

Question 10

What did Sparks et al. find in terms of culture modulating implicit ownership-induced self bias in memory?

Answer 10

A reversed bias for Asian Ps; often remember their mother’s items stronger than their own

Question 11

Barton et al. gave Ps (all female) a mug from kmart then displayed a picture of it on a screen along with mugs belonging to the experimenter. After being told to move towards it if theirs or away from it if not theirs (or vice versa), what happened?

Answer 11

They performed much faster movements for their own mugs than the experimenters; their own property became part of their extended self, even when interacting with the picture of the mug (not the physical one)

Question 12

When Turk et al. wanted to know if the self-referencing effect could be applied to education, what did they find?

Answer 12

They presented children aged 94 and 104 months with sentences referring to the self or other, and words couched within the self condition were better remembered and spelled more accurately

Question 13

Describe the endowment effect, and how Kahneman et al. showed this in experimental tests

Answer 13

It refers to how much value we place on an object that’s been given to us; When Ps bought a mug at a certain value and were asked to resell it, they valued it more and wanted to sell it for more (the median selling price was over twice the median buying price)

Question 14

In another buying/selling task, what did Feng et al. show the endowment effect to extend to, and what did fMRI scans show?

Answer 14

It can extend from self to mother; activations in the mPFC, insula and striatum were almost as high when thinking about buying/selling their mother’s items as it was for their own items

Question 15

In Ada’s own study, Ps were given a mug to paint and take home to use for 2 weeks before returning to perform a reach for-lift-replace mug task. What were they trying to measure?

Answer 15

They used motion capture to examine how we interact with our own objects; had them paint their mugs (labour task) to push the concept of property; then measured how they positioned the mug in space (x, y, z coordinates)

Question 16

What were the results of Ada’s (Cunningham et al.’s) study on grasping personal property?

Answer 16

P’s own mugs were pulled in closer and experimenter’s pushed away towards experimenter (E); accelerating and decelerating was harder with their own mug and gentler with the E’s (except when they left the room, suggesting adherence to social conventions)

Question 17

Describe children’s concept of “mine” and “yours” at 16 months old (Fenson et al.)

Answer 17

They start to show possessive pronoun use: “mine” is understood by approx. 30%; no more than 9% have acquired possessive pronouns for other people (yours, his, hers, etc)

Question 18

Toddlers initially impose their personal ownership on objects before they develop an appreciation of the property of others. What happens by age 2 and between 2-4?

Answer 18

2 yr olds can verbally identify the owner of a familiar object (e.g. mum’s shoe); 2-4 yr olds attribute ownership by possession (first to hold it) and creative labourer (maker of small changes/controller = owner)

Question 19

In a motion capture experiment with children(23-29 m/o, 8/12 y/o, and kids with ASD 5/8), they were given a bottle to use for 10 days -2 wks, then what did they do when they returned to the lab?

Answer 19

Recorded their motions as they picked up and put down their own bottle and the experimenter’s, and measured the distance from the y axis at maximum lift and at final placement

Question 20

What results of the bottle task with typically developing and ASD children suggest about self-ownership bias?

Answer 20

Even at a very young age, typically developing children show embodiment of ownership/self-other differentiation (pulling their own bottle towards themselves compared to E’s), but positioning is much more inconsistent for children with ASD; they don’t show this differentiation

Question 21

What we see of our own faces can be influenced by attention and inputs from multiple sources. What did Smith et al. hypothesise in regards to whether visual processing is selectively associated with concurrent states of self-awareness?

Answer 21

If it is, then recognising your mirrored face should be easier with internally-directed self-awareness (induced by focusing on breathing); but recognising your un-mirrored face should be easier with socially-directed self-awareness (induced by thinking about own strengths and weaknesses)

Question 22

What were the IVs in Smith et al.’s first experiment?

Answer 22

Types of self-awareness (internally-directed/socially directed); Types of self-faces (mirror/photograph)

Question 23

In Experiment 1 of Smith et al.’s study, Ps saw mirrored self faces, un-mirrored self faces, and other people’s faces, and were instructed to either attend to their breathing or think about what defines them. They were then given an identification task to measure their speed of self-perception (press 1 button for self-face or another for other-face). What were the results?

Answer 23

Mirrored faces were recognised faster with internal self-awareness (from own point of view), and un-mirrored recognised faster with social self-awareness (as others would see you); so state of self-awareness influences speed of perception

Question 24

In Smith et al.’s second study, they wanted to know if the state of self-awareness influences the strength of self perception. They showed Ps a continuum of morphed faces, from own to a celebrity’s face; then an identification task and measured the point of subjective equality (PSE). What was their reasoning behind this?

Answer 24

Stronger self-perception would result in increased self responses to morphs closer to the celebrity’s face, causing a rightward shift in the function (not “correct” self-perception, but a tendency to recognise/pick own features of self in the morph)

Question 25

What were the results of Smith et al.’s celebrity experiment, and what do they suggest?

Answer 25

The PSE for recognising mirrored faces was pushed to the right (toward celebrity) and were recognised faster; and pushed to the left for un-mirrored (towards own face); suggesting from a social standpoint, they’re less likely to see themselves in the morph that’s actually closer to themselves; we can alter people’s biases about the way they view the environment

Question 26

Joint action with others requires more than just imitation. What must we do when sharing info and/or the environment with others?

Answer 26

Know what they’re perceiving; act in concert; anticipate their action goal

Question 27

Describe negative priming

Answer 27

When a stimulus has been presented as the distractor previously, response to it has been suppressed. If it’s then presented as the target, response to it is slower than if it was always the target; thus the history of stimuli matters

Question 28

What did Welsh and McDougall find about negative priming in a distractor task performance with others, to see whether the history of another person’s stimulus is represented in us?

Answer 28

When a previous distractor then became a target, there was an increase in error as well as RT in performance for both individuals and pairs (performance takes a hit for ignored repetition); we seem to represent actions of another within our own representation; 2 minds become 1)

Question 29

Stoit had children and adolescents with ASD control a virtual horizontal bar balancing a ball, and had them lift them into an area between 2 blue lines and hold for 2 secs without dropping the ball. There were 2 joint action conditions: nonisomorphic (j2) - one hand/effector of Ps at each end of the bar; isomorphic (j4) - both effectors of both Ps. What was predicted?

Answer 29

If they have problems predicting each others’ actions, then should be poor at anticipating the movement onset of their co-actor; should be inter-individual differences in j2 condition, as they can only control their own side of the bar, so have to be sensitive to what the other’s doing

Question 30

What were the results of Stoit’s study, and what does this suggest?

Answer 30

ASD children were faster in j2 condition; they were anticipating too quickly what the other person will do and jumping in (joint action not smooth) suggesting they’re not representing the other person, whereas control group waited for each other to synchronise their lift; in j4 condition ASD kids tended to distribute the lift more to their outer hands, helping them differentiate between self from other generated action effects

Question 31

Phylogenetically recent (isocortex) areas develop along a cubic trajectory with age. What kind of trajectory do more primitive regions follow?

Answer 31

Either quadratic (with an initial increase in cortical thickness followed by a decrease), or a simple linear decline in thickness

Question 32

For regions in which development follows a cubic or quadratic trajectory, at what age and in which regions does cortical thickness peak?

Answer 32

Around 7 years in primary sensory motor areas than in secondary areas

Question 33

Parietal regions peak at around 9 yrs. Which regions reach peak thickness last (around or after 10.5 yrs)?

Answer 33

Dorsolateral prefrontal, medial prefrontal, and cingulate cortices (mPFC keeps fine tuning and keeps developing itself)

Question 34

In which kinds of tasks does the mPFC activate more in adolescents than adults, and why might this be?

Answer 34

On self vs. social knowledge retrieval and when thinking about own action and intentions relative to thinking about physical events; though it seems counterintuitive, they have to recruit a greater area than adults to think about others

Question 35

Grey matter in the PFC increases during childhood, peaking in early adolescence (11 in girls; 13 in boys). What happens during adolescence and what does this partly depend on, according to Blakemore?

Answer 35

There’s a large loss/decrease due to pruning; loss of excess; Partly dependent on the environment; connections or synapses that are being used are strengthened, and those not being used in that particular environment are eliminated

Question 36

Although adolescents and adults are using more or less the same network of regions, what is there a change in? (Blakemore)

Answer 36

The level of relative activity in the different regions of the network; decrease in mPFC activity; adolescents use mid/PFC more than adults to do the same kind of social cognition tasks involving thinking about other people’s minds, emotions or intentions (maybe because they use a different kind of mental approach; a different cognitive strategy to make social decisions)