The Effect Of Self-related Information On Conflict Task Processing

Self-related information has a unique processing mechanism unique. Many studies take the self-relevant information as the object of study object. Most of the earliest researchers began to study self-relevant information from the auditory. Using the famous dichotic listening paradigm, they play the subjects own name to their non-attention ear, then this name compared to other non-note ear information can be detected more easily. We often say that the "cocktail effect" is the same truth. Then studies of self-relevant information were gradually enriched. Some studies have found that self-relevant information can be obtained under the same conditions to better memory. There are also studies of personality adjectives used as experimental materials, suggested that people in the processing of self-relevant information, will have the self-reference effect. Some studies classified the self-related information according to different properties, they found self-related information of different properties has differences in processing. This is called positive self-bias effect. In the self-related study field, psychologist usually used the self-information such as personality, face, name, etc. Previous studies have some major conclusions:(1) Self-relevant information can take the initiative to attract attention and more easily to be processed.(2) Self-relevant information in the same condition can have a better memory performance.(3) When need to make judgments, subjects are easier to test positive, positive message as the self-relevant information, on the contrary, Even the self-relevant information, when the message was negative, they need more time to determine whether the message is self-related. But there are also some problems in this area. Most of the studies regarded self-relevant information as task-related stimuli to study. So they can more directly investigate the mechanism of self-related processing. Few studies have regarded self-relevant information as irrelevant stimuli to the task to study. When the self-relevant information is a kind of irrelevant stimulus to the task, we are interested whether it will have a different result. So far, there has no conclusion. Therefore, this study is talking self-relevant information as interference and task-irrelevant stimulus to research.In this study, we interested in the main impact of self-related information processing in the conflict tasks. In the experimental task, Self-relevant information is irrelevant to the task as an interference stimulus. What we care about is that when self-relevant information is irrelevant information in the conflict tasks, whether it will enter the attention and processed, and how processed. If there have a processing, we want to know what the influence to the conflict tasks. we used the name as a self-relevant information in the study, and use color flanker task as a paradigm of conflict task. In Experiment1, we use a simple stimulus, which the self-related information and Color stimuli is separated. Name will appear in the middle of the screen, two color lumps appear on both sides of the name. Subjects’ task is to determine whether the color lumps have the same color. The results show, all the trials’ accuracy was0.94(SD=0.13). Accuracy differences between the conditions were not significant. Under the self-relevant condition, the reaction time is longer than other conditions, and it is all the same in congruent and incongruent trials. Reaction time in familiar condition is longer than unfamiliar condition, but is faster than self-relevant condition. Reaction time in self-relevant condition was longest. The flanker effect is not significant between different conditions.In Experiment2, we use a compound stimulus. The self-related information and Color stimulus is Complex. Subjects in a color flanker task will see three names vertically aligned. They are one name. The name may be relevant to subjects or may be totally unfamiliar. Three names only have two possible colors:red or green. The names of up and down have the same color, and their color mat be different from the middle name or the three names have the same color. Subjects’ task is to determine the color of the middle name, and asked the subject to make judgments as quick and accurate as possible. The results show the accuracy between self-related trials and non-self-related trials was significantly differences. Trials of subjects’own name were lower than other condition trials. The main effect of self-relevant condition on reaction time is significantly differences. The main effect of flanker effect on reaction time is also significantly differences. Reaction time between self-relevant condition and flanker effect is not significantly differences.In the two experiments, we both use name as the self-related information and both use color flanker task as the conflict tasks. The two experimental paradigm are relatively simple, so when the subjects doing the task will involve relatively small cognitive processes. We can investigate the effect of self-related information on the conflict task more effectively. Experiment1used simple stimulus. Experiment2used compound stimulus. This is also the innovation of this study. Most previous studies set self-relevant information as a simply information. In this study, there are some problems yet. First, the single research method only got behavioral data. Using behavioral data to explain problems have limitations. In order to completely understand the problem, we need more other research methods and explore the neural mechanisms. Secondly, the simple experimental paradigms may impact the result. Studies have shown that the cognitive load will affect the processing of cognitive information. So the problems also point out the direction for our future research. In future studies we can make some aspects of the EEG and MRI. And the influence of the processing on self-related information between different experimental paradigms and different tasks.