Self salience across the age range

我们最近证明，相对于与他人相关的刺激，我们对与自己相关的刺激的知觉会增强。也就是说，与我们自身相关的刺激增加了“自我突显”。也有证据表明，随着年龄的增长，我们把自己放在首位的倾向会增加，这可能会导致老年人社会认知的其他变化--比如看到他人观点的能力。在这个项目中，我们将对年龄是否会导致知觉上的自我突显增加进行详细的分析，以及这种影响是否预示着在更高级别的任务中，如面孔识别、记忆和看到他人观点时，会有更强的自我优先顺序。在该项目的第一部分，我们将测试老年人在感知方面的自我偏见是否增加，是否在特定的感知过程中发生变化，以及这些行为变化与大脑活动的变化如何相关。第二部分将评估可能导致自我偏见改变的两个潜在因素--自我相关信息的回报和情感价值。年龄相关的变化是由于老年人表现出更强的奖励效应和/或更强的情绪对知觉的影响吗？在第三部分中，我们将评估知觉中与年龄相关的自我突显的变化是否可以预测更高级别任务(面孔识别、记忆、看到他人观点)的变化。此外，通过测试认知中自我偏见减少的脑损伤患者，我们将评估是否需要感知偏差才能在更高水平的任务中产生自我优先排序的效果。该项目将提供一个细粒度的分析，以了解自我相关的处理过程是否以及如何随着年龄的增长而变化。

We have recently demonstrated that our perception is enhanced for stimuli that are associated with ourselves relative to stimuli that are associated with other people. That is, stimuli associated to ourselves have increased 'self salience'. There is also evidence that our tendency to prioritize ourselves increases as we age, and this may contribute to other changes in social cognition in older individuals - an example being the ability to see the view of other people. In this project we will conduct a detailed analysis of whether ageing leads to increases in self saliency in perception, and whether such effects predict stronger self-prioritization in higher-level tasks such as face recognition, memory and seeing the viewpoint of other people. In Part 1 of the project we will test whether the self-bias in perception is increased in older people, whether there are changes in particular perceptual processes, and how these changes in behaviour relate to changes in brain activity. Part 2 will evaluate two potential factors that might lead to alterations in self-bias - the reward and the emotional value of self-related information. Are age-related changes due to older adults showing stronger effects of reward and/or stronger effects of emotion on perception? In Part 3 we will assess if age-related changes in self salience in perception predict changes in higher-level tasks (face recognition, memory, seeing others' viewpoints). In addition, by testing brain lesioned patients with reduced self-bias in perception, we will evaluate if perceptual biases are required in order to generate self-prioritization effects in higher-level tasks. The project will provide a fine-grained analysis of whether and how self-related processing changes as we age.