Sheila J. Cunningham

From attentional prioritization to enhanced memory, self‐cues trigger a variety of effects within human cognition. Recent work suggests that self‐reference may also enhance working memory, possibly via attentional prioritization. However, there is no direct evidence that self‐cues enhance working memory capacity, or that such boosts covary with individuals' attentional function. Here, we provide the first direct evidence of enhanced working memory capacity for self‐referential cues, independent of attentional processing. We adapted a verbal working memory complex span to create a ‘Self’ condition (featuring the participant's own name), ‘Other’ condition (featuring a non‐self‐name), and Control condition (with no name), in 7–9‐year‐old children (Exp.1, N = 71) and adults (Exp.2, N = 52). In both experiments, the Self condition elicited significantly higher spans than the other conditions (Exp 1: p < .001, η _p ² = .32; Exp 2: p < .001, η _p ² = .25), but this increase in capacity was unrelated to measures of attentional processing or backward digit span. Moreover, equivalent boosts were observed in children and adults, despite adults' significantly higher underlying capacity. We propose a chunking interpretation based on enhanced binding of self‐associated items, directly benefiting individual's working memory capacity regardless of their current attentional competence or ‘baseline’ capacity.

Women remain underrepresented across most roles in the esports industry, which has long been associated with gender-based harassment and toxicity. While research has tended to focus on the experiences of women in professional esports careers, the current study investigated the nature and impact of harassment and toxicity on amateur players. Through interviews with eight women experienced in esports participation, experiences and costs of gender-based exclusion were documented. Stereotyped roles were common, with women facing gender stereotypes of both ability and character appropriateness, as well as sexual objectification. The women reported resignation about systemic misogyny, juxtaposed with hope that specific industry-level changes could elicit improvements. While the women often avoided revealing their gender, there was a strong sense that visible role models and solidarity among the female community in esports can provide an effective protection against gender-based harassment, potentially combatting low rates of women participating in esports in the longer term.

This study investigates the self-reference effect (SRE) with an ownership memory task across several age groups, providing the first age exploration of implicit ownership memory biases from adolescence to older adulthood ( N = 159). Using a well-established ownership task, participants were required to sort images of grocery items as belonging to themselves or to a fictitious unnamed Other. After sorting and a brief distractor task, participants completed a surprise one-step source memory test. Overall, there was a robust SRE, with greater source memory accuracy for self-owned items. The SRE attenuated with age, such that the magnitude of difference between self and other memory diminished into older adulthood. Importantly, these findings were not due to a deterioration of memory for self-owned items, but rather an increase in memory performance for other-owned items. Linear mixed effects analyses showed self-biases in reaction times, such that self-owned items were identified more rapidly compared with other owned items. Again, age interacted with this effect showing that the responses of older adults were slowed, especially for other-owned items. Several theoretical implications were drawn from these findings, but we suggest that older adults may not experience ownership-related biases to the same degree as younger adults. Consequently, SREs through the lens of mere ownership may attenuate with age.

The self‐memory system depends on the prioritization and capture of self‐relevant information, so may be disrupted by difficulties in attending to, encoding and retrieving self‐relevant information. The current study compares memory for self‐referenced and other‐referenced items in children with ADHD and typically developing comparison groups matched for verbal and chronological age. Children aged 5–14 ( N = 90) were presented with everyday objects alongside an own‐face image (self‐reference trials) or an unknown child's image (other‐referenced trials). They were asked whether the child shown would like the object, before completing a surprise source memory test. In a second task, children performed, and watched another person perform, a series of actions before their memory for the actions was tested. A significant self‐reference effect (SRE) was found in the typically developing children (i.e. both verbal and chronological age‐matched comparison groups) for the first task, with significantly better memory for self‐referenced than other‐referenced objects. However, children with ADHD showed no SRE, suggesting a compromised ability to bind information with the cognitive self‐concept. In the second task, all groups showed superior memory for actions carried out by the self, suggesting a preserved enactment effect in ADHD. Implications and applications for the self‐memory system in ADHD are discussed.

Recent evidence suggests that voice-cues associated with the self can activate attentional biases in cognition (Payne et al., 2021), mirroring self-prioritization effects in the visual domain. Here, we report two experiments that replicate Payne et al.’s vocal self-prioritization effect (Exp 1), and extend it by including a novel ‘own-voice’ manipulation (Exp 2). In Exp 1 (N=35 UK male adults), a voice-label matching task comprising three external voices showed that reaction time and accuracy are improved when the voice cue is associated with a self-label (‘you’), relative to a ‘friend’ or ‘stranger’ label. In Exp 2 (N=90 UK male adults), the voice assigned to self, friend or stranger labels was either a recording of the participants’ own voice, or an external voice. Reaction time and accuracy data showed a consistent advantage for the participant’s own-voice, even when it was assigned to the ‘friend’ or ‘stranger’ label, over-riding standard self-prioritization effects. This advantage was boosted when the own-voice was assigned to the ‘self’ label. Findings are discussed in the context of vocal self-prioritization, and the implications of this research for recent technological advances that allow own-voice patterns to be artificially replicated.

Pervasive gender gaps in academic subject and career choices are likely to be underpinned by social influences, including gender stereotypes of competence in academic and career domains (e.g., men excel at engineering, women excel at care), and model-based social learning biases (i.e., selective copying of particular individuals). Here, we explore the influence of gender stereotypes on social learning decisions in adolescent and adult males and females. Participants (Exp 1: N = 69 adolescents; Exp 2: N = 265 adults) were presented with 16 difficult multiple-choice questions from stereotypically feminine (e.g., care) and masculine (e.g., engineering) domains. The answer choices included the correct response and three incorrect responses paired with a male model, a female model, or no model. Participants’ gender stereotype knowledge and endorsement were measured, and adolescents (Exp. 1) listed their academic subject choices. As predicted, there was a bias towards copying answers paired with a model (Exp.1: 74%, Exp. 2: 65% ps < .001). This resulted in less success than would be expected by chance (Exp. 1: 12%, Exp. 2: 16% ps < .001), demonstrating a negative consequence of social information. Adults (Exp 2) showed gender stereotyped social learning biases; they were more likely to copy a male model in masculine questions and a female model in feminine questions (p = .012). However, adolescents (Exp 1) showed no evidence of this stereotype bias; rather, there was a tendency for male adolescents to copy male models regardless of domain (p = .004). This own-gender bias was not apparent in female adolescents. In Exp 1, endorsement of masculine stereotypes was positively associated with selecting more own-gender typical academic subjects at school and copying significantly more male models in the male questions. The current study provides evidence for the first time that decision-making in both adolescence and adulthood is impacted by gender biases.

Self-cues such as personal pronouns are known to elicit processing biases, such as attention capture and prioritisation in working memory. This may impact the performance of tasks that have a high attentional load like mathematical problem-solving. Here, we compared the speed and accuracy with which children solved numerical problems that included either the self-cue “you,” or a different character name. First, we piloted a self-referencing manipulation with N = 52, 7 to 11 year-olds, testing performance on addition and subtraction problems that had either a single referent (“You”/“Sam”) or more than one referent. We took into account operation and positioning of the pronoun and also measured performance on attention and working memory tasks. We found a robust accuracy advantage for problems that included “you,” regardless of how many characters were included. The accuracy advantage for problems with a self-pronoun was not statistically associated with individual differences in attention or working memory. In our main study (9 to 11 year-olds, N = 144), we manipulated problem difficulty by creating consistently and inconsistently worded addition and subtraction problems. We found significantly higher speed and accuracy for problems that included “you.” However, this effect varied by task difficulty, with the self-pronoun effect being strongest in the most difficult inconsistently worded, subtraction problems. The advantage of problems with a self-pronoun was not associated with individual differences in working memory. These findings suggest that self-cues like the pronoun “you” can be usefully applied in numerical processing tasks, an effect that may be attributable to the effects of self-cues on attention.

Pervasive gender gaps in academic subject and career choices are likely to be underpinned by social influences, including gender stereotypes of competence in academic and career domains (e.g., men excel at engineering, women excel at care), and model-based social learning biases (i.e., selective copying of particular individuals). Here, we explore the influence of gender stereotypes on social learning decisions in adolescent and adult males and females. Participants (Exp 1: N=69 adolescents; Exp 2: N=265 adults) were presented with 16 difficult multiple-choice questions from stereotypically feminine (e.g., care) and masculine (e.g., engineering) domains. The answer choices included the correct response and three incorrect responses paired with a male model, a female model, or no model. Participants’ gender stereotype knowledge and endorsement were measured, and adolescents (Exp. 1) listed their academic subject choices. As predicted, there was a bias towards copying answers paired with a model (Exp.1: 74%, Exp. 2: 65% ps <.001). This resulted in less success than would be expected by chance (Exp. 1: 12%, Exp. 2: 16% ps <.001), demonstrating a negative consequence of social information. Adults (Exp 2) showed gender stereotyped social learning biases; they were more likely to copy a male model in masculine questions and a female model in feminine questions (p = .014). However, adolescents (Exp 1) showed no evidence of this stereotype bias; rather, there was a tendency for male adolescents to copy male models regardless of domain (p = .004). This own-gender bias was not apparent in female adolescents. In Exp 1, endorsement of masculine stereotypes was positively associated with selecting more own-gender typical academic subjects at school and copying significantly more male models in the male questions. The current study provides evidence for the first time that decision-making in both adolescence and adulthood is impacted by gender biases.

The attention system that allocates resources across competing aspects of the environment is influenced by biases toward particular types of stimuli, such as cues of threat (e.g., angry-face image), self-reference (e.g., own-face image), and current goals (e.g., food image when hungry). Here, we used dot probe tasks to investigate which of these stimulus types are prioritized in the attentional hierarchy, measuring response latency to dot probes presented in the same location as different face types. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 42) were presented with self, angry, and neutral face images in the dot probe task, which revealed a clear attentional bias for self-images over both angry and neutral images. In Experiment 2, each participant (N = 69) was assigned a self, angry, or neutral goal image for a secondary monitoring task designed to induce a temporary goal, and this image was included in the stimuli presented in the dot probe task. Again, self-cues were found to produce a strong attentional bias, but images associated with temporary goals were found to be the most effective source of attentional bias. Results are discussed in relation to the relative importance of self, threat, and temporary goal cues in the attentional hierarchy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).