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

• Published in: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) Vol. 72; no. 3; pp. 589 - 598
• Main Authors: Constable, Merryn D, Welsh, Timothy N, Huffman, Greg, Pratt, Jay
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.03.2019; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Bias; attention; Ownership; temporal order judgement; self-relevance; self-bias
• ISSN: 1747-0218; 1747-0226
• DOI: 10.1177/1747021818762010

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.