I before U: Temporal order judgements reveal bias for self-owned objects

Constable, Merryn, Welsh, Timothy N, Huffman, Greg and Pratt, Jay (2019) I before U: Temporal order judgements reveal bias for self-owned objects. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72 (3). pp. 589-598. ISSN 1747-0218

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Abstract

A multitude of studies demonstrate that self-relevant stimuli influence attention. Self-owned objects are a special class of self-relevant stimuli. If a self-owned object can indeed be characterised as a self-relevant stimulus then, consistent with theoretical predictions, a behavioural effect of ownership on attention should be present. To test this prediction, a task was selected that is known to be particularly sensitive measure of the prioritisation of visual information: the temporal order judgement. Participants completed temporal order judgements with pictures of “own” and “experimenter” owned objects (mugs) presented on either side of a central fixation cross. There was a variable onset delay between each picture, ranging between 0 ms and 105 ms, and participants were asked to indicate which mug appeared first. The results indicated a reliable change in the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) in favour of their own mug. Such a change in the PSS was not observed for two groups of participants who were exposed to a mug but did not keep the mug. A further experiment indicated that the source of the bias in PSS was more consistent with a criterion shift or top-down attentional prioritisation rather than a perceptual bias. These findings suggest that ownership, beyond mere-touch, mere-choice, or familiarity, leads to prioritised processing and responses, but the mechanism underlying the effect is not likely to be perceptual in nature.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	ownership, self-relevance, temporal order judgement, attention, self-bias
Subjects:	C800 Psychology
Department:	Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Psychology
Depositing User:	Rachel Branson
Date Deposited:	06 Mar 2020 12:15
Last Modified:	06 Mar 2020 12:15
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/42393

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