Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

The self-face automatically captures attention without consciousness

View ORCID ProfileMichał Bola, Marta Paź, Łucja Doradzińska, Anna Nowicka
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.22.915595
Michał Bola
1Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, 3 Pasteur Street, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Michał Bola
  • For correspondence: m.bola@nencki.edu.pl
Marta Paź
1Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, 3 Pasteur Street, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Łucja Doradzińska
1Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, 3 Pasteur Street, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Anna Nowicka
2Laboratory of Language Neurobiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, 3 Pasteur Street, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

It is intuitively clear and experimentally well established that stimuli representing ourselves, like our own name or face, benefit from preferential processing. However, two questions remain to be addressed. First, does the prioritization mechanism operate in an automatic manner during an early processing, or rather in a more controlled fashion at later processing stages? Second, which of the reported effects are specific to self-related stimuli, and which can also be observed for other familiar or salient stimuli? We used a dot-probe task and an N2pc ERP component analysis to investigate attentional mechanism of the self-face perception and to tackle both questions. The former, by employing a backwards masking procedure to render faces subliminal and thus isolate the early and preconscious processing stages. The latter, by investigating whether a face that is only visually familiar captures attention in a similar manner to the self-face. We demonstrate that both conscious and unconscious perception of the self-face image results in a robust attention capture, which indicates an early and automatic self-prioritization mechanism. Further, the visually familiar face did not attract attention in the conscious condition, suggesting that the attentional prioritization was specific to a self-referential stimulus. Unexpectedly, the visually familiar face did attract attention, but only in the second half of the unconscious block, after a sufficient number of presentations. Such attention shifts to an already visually familiar, but still highly degraded stimulus, might facilitate its’ recognition. More generally, our study provides further evidence supporting a dissociation between attention and consciousness.

Significance statement The ability to recognize ourselves lies at the heart of self-consciousness. It is well known that stimuli representing or associated with “self” are processed preferentially by our cognitive system. In the present study we show that an image of our own face indeed robustly attracts attention. Importantly, even when participants were not aware that their own face was presented - due to a very short display time and a “masking” procedure - their attention was shifted to the invisible self-face image. This indicates that the mechanism of self-prioritization is very rapid, automatic, and occurs at early stages of visual processing. More generally, our study provides evidence that attention can operate and select salient stimuli even in the absence of awareness.

Footnotes

  • Conflict of interest: The authors declare no competing interests.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted January 23, 2020.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
The self-face automatically captures attention without consciousness
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
The self-face automatically captures attention without consciousness
Michał Bola, Marta Paź, Łucja Doradzińska, Anna Nowicka
bioRxiv 2020.01.22.915595; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.22.915595
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
The self-face automatically captures attention without consciousness
Michał Bola, Marta Paź, Łucja Doradzińska, Anna Nowicka
bioRxiv 2020.01.22.915595; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.22.915595

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4078)
  • Biochemistry (8750)
  • Bioengineering (6467)
  • Bioinformatics (23314)
  • Biophysics (11719)
  • Cancer Biology (9133)
  • Cell Biology (13227)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7403)
  • Ecology (11360)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15076)
  • Genetics (10390)
  • Genomics (14000)
  • Immunology (9109)
  • Microbiology (22025)
  • Molecular Biology (8772)
  • Neuroscience (47312)
  • Paleontology (350)
  • Pathology (1418)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2480)
  • Physiology (3701)
  • Plant Biology (8043)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1427)
  • Synthetic Biology (2206)
  • Systems Biology (6009)
  • Zoology (1247)