Evidence of Self Referential Prioritization on the basis of Visual Features:Attributing Salience to Rule - Learning

Participants show faster and more accurate processing for arbitrary geometrical stimuli if they are paired with a self- rel-evant label (triangle = you). We ask whether participants only form self associations with specific exemplars (triangle,circle, square), or whether they analyse the stimuli in terms of visual features, (for e.g. no. of vertices = 3), and cangeneralise the learned associations with the entire category of the stimuli (say, all triangles). In our experiments, partici-pants showed the self referential advantage not only to previously exposed exemplars of the same category, but also novelstimuli that could be categorised on the basis of similar visual features. Interestingly, they could generalise not only on thebasis of a single rule, but also on the basis of a conjunction of more than one rule. These findings could be extended toexplain social categorisation in the real world through group memberships

Estimating the Associations between Big Five Personality Traits, Testosterone, and Cortisol

OBJECTIVE: Hormones are often conceptualized as biological markers of individual differences and have been associated with a variety of behavioral indicators and characteristics, such as mating behavior or acquiring and maintaining dominance. However, before researchers create strong theoretical models for how hormones modulate individual and social behavior, information on how hormones are associated with dominant models of personality is needed. Although there have been some studies attempting to quantify the associations between personality traits, testosterone, and cortisol, there are many inconsistencies across these studies. METHODS: In this registered report, we examined associations between testosterone, cortisol, and Big Five personality traits. We aggregated 25 separate samples to yield a single sample of 3964 (50.3% women; 27.7% of women were on hormonal contraceptives). Participants completed measures of personality and provided saliva samples for testosterone and cortisol assays. RESULTS: The results from multi-level models and meta-analyses revealed mostly weak, non-significant associations between testosterone or cortisol and personality traits. The few significant effects were still very small in magnitude (e.g., testosterone and conscientiousness: r = −0.05). A series of moderation tests revealed that hormone-personality associations were mostly similar in men and women, those using hormonal contraceptives or not, and regardless of the interaction between testosterone and cortisol (i.e., a variant of the dual-hormone hypothesis). CONCLUSIONS: Altogether, we did not detect many robust associations between Big Five personality traits and testosterone or cortisol. The findings are discussed in the context of biological models of personality and the utility of examining heterogeneity in hormone-personality associations

I Remember Me the best, always? Evidence for Self-Prioritization in Working Memory Binding using a Visuo-Spatial Working Memory Task.

Research has demonstrated an advantage for the processing of self-associated stimuli for various mental functions (Sui & Humphreys, 2017). However, relatively little is known about whether prioritization exists for internal representations (Yin et al., 2019). In the current study, we first asked participants to associate social – labels ('self', ‘friend’, ‘stranger’) with arbitrary geometrical shapes (triangle, quadrilateral, and pentagon) (Sui et al., 2012) and then tested them for the maintenance of one or more features (shape, location, or a combination) of the target stimuli during a delayed match – to – sample task. In line with our expectations, our participants indeed showed a distinct advantage for self-associated stimuli for maintaining single features (identity, location) and a combination (shape & location). Our findings align with the proposal that self-reference may aid in binding information in working memory (Sui & Humphreys, 2015)

Handedness Modulates Spatial Attention – Insights From Individual Variations In Lateralization Of Cognitive Functions

Increased left-handedness and atypical lateralization in individuals with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders point to a deep yet unresolved connection between handedness, hemispheric asymmetry, and normal brain functioning. Most handedness-lateralization research has either excluded left-handers due to their higher variability, or failed to control the degree of handedness. The discrete categorization based on arbitrary criteria or cut-offs has made it challenging to address inter-individual variations in the lateralization of cognitive functions. In this study, capturing responses from across the handedness continuum in tasks of the divided visual half-field paradigm, we explored the lateralization patterns in different stages of visual processing of orientation, global-and-local, faces and words. We found that the degree of handedness significantly affects lateralization in all tasks except orientation. Notably, even though the direction of hemispheric preference did reverse in left-handers for visuospatial attention like in global-local processing, the same was not for word and face processing. Our results substantially evidence that handedness differentially influences the lateralization of visual processes. The observed relationship between the dominant hand and global-local processing significantly points to the action-dependent modulation of visual attention. We conclude that the degree of left-handedness is potentially a critical factor in lateralization, and a continuum approach would be beneficial to control for the individual variations in laterality research