Processing Priority For One’s Own Name

The name plays an important role in one’s personal lives, is an important symbol of a person which different from others’, and also closely linked to self. It is well established in a number of studies that there exists a cognitive priority for one’s own name. Among these findings is the well-known cocktail party effect which demonstrates that one’s own name can be more easily detected, even in unattended conditions. Following Moray (1959)’s famous study, cocktail party effect has been replicated in a large number of studies using various approaches and in auditory and visual sensory modalities.However, studies of attentional capture by self-related stimuli have reached inconsistent results. Some studies using a participant’s own name as a distractor have not found evidence to support the more powerful interfering effect of this name. There is also evidence that one’s own name gains cognitive priority only when it is presented within the focus of attention or when participants are set to identify it.Another issue that remains unresolved is whether familiarity might influence the cognitive advantage for one’s own name. Given the high familiarity inherent in self-related information, it seems quite reasonable to attribute this advantage to familiarity in some way. Surprisingly, however, little research has been done to address this issue.In order to examine cognitive advantage for one’s own name and the role of familiarity in this advantage, the present study conducted three experiments. Experiment1displayed a series of color chinese characters, including the first and last name of subject and a celebrity, the first name was displayed adjacent to the last name. The subjects were required to judge whether the color of currently presented character was as the same as the preceding one, after the judgment task the subjects was required to report whether the two adjoining chinese characters can form the meaningful phrases or symbols. The experiment was used to when one’s own name was not specifically relevant for the task at hand, and was it still able to attract attention? The experiment2was designed on the basis of experiment1, which cut off the contact in the task between the first and last name of subjects. The subjects were required to judge the color of characters. Compared with the experiment1, this experiment reduced the working memory load for the subjects and the more cognitive resources were used for the completion of tasks. After the judgment task, subjects were asked to report whether the two adjoining chinese characters can form the meaningful phrases or symbols. The experiment was used to further investigate when one’s own name was not specifically relevant for the task at hand, and was it still able to attract attention? In experiment3the eye-tracking technique was used to investigate these two issues. It was hypothesized that, if one’s own name can capture attention and if familiarity is not the crucial factor in this advantage, trials featuring one’s own name would elicit a lower number of saccades and an earlier start time of first fixations, as compared with trials featuring other names, including familiar names. The results of experiment1and experiment2both showed that the majority of the subjects noticed their own names, but only a few participants noticed famous name, and these subjects also noticed their own names. Experiment3showed that there were fewer saccades and an earlier start time of first fixation on target in trials where participants were asked to search for their own names compared to personally familiar or famous name. In addition, they also demonstrated faster response time and higher accuracy in this kind of trials.Taken together, these findings provided important evidence that one’s own name has the potential to capture attention and familiarity cannot account for this advantage. Further research is needed to differentiate effects of personal-relevance and general familiarity to confirm the effect of personal-relevance in the processing of self-related information and explore the reason of inconsistent results in studies of attentional capture by self-related information.