自我信息加工优势中的熟悉性问题

The Role of Familiarity in Cognitive Advantage for Self-related Information

熟悉性对于自我信息加工优势的影响往往与自我相关性的作用交织在一起,从而使其成为该领域的一个研究重点和难点。文章分别介绍了自我参照效应、自我面孔和人名识别研究中对该问题进行考察的主要思路与发现。现有证据显示,熟悉性与自我特异性在自我信息的加工优势中是可分离的,从而表明自我信息所固有的高熟悉性可能并不是造成其具有加工优势的决定性因素。文章在展望部分将熟悉性进一步细分为材料的熟悉性与任务的熟悉性,并提出未来的研究应该特别注意考察任务熟悉性可能存在的影响作用。

Cognitive advantage for self - related information has been well established in a number of studies using various stimuli. However, there are debates about the effect of familiarity in this advantage. Given this, the current paper aimed to review previous find- ings in this field, In research on the self - reference effect, the effect of familiarity is usually examined by comparing memory performance between self- referential processing and other - referential processing tasks. Participants usually demonstrate better memory for material pro- cessed in reference to self than those processed in reference to famous persons. Nonetheless, when the control condition involves inti- mate persons, such as parents, partner, or close friends, the magnitude of self advantage is greatly reduced. Significant cultural differ- ences have been confirmed in these studies with Westerners showing self advantage over even intimate persons and Western participants showing no difference in self/intimate person - referential processing. Some findings also show that stimuli type may interact with the reference target to influence memory performance. Studies with face stimuli show that one＇s own face is detected faster than others＇ faces, including familiar faces, even under unat- tended conditions. When used as distracters, it is more difficult to ignore and show stronger interfering power on target stimuli. In fact, one＇s own face is not necessarily more familiar than others＇ faces, as one has more opportunities to see other＇s faces. As a result, the su- perior performance demonstrated by own face provides a convincing evidence that familiarity might not be the determining factor for self advantage. Following Moray （1959）＇s famous study, the cocktail party effect has been replicated in many studies. Surprisingly, however, lit- tle research has been done to address the issue of familiarity. The very few studies, which have employed familiar names as control stim- uli, actually focused on the neural basis of self - name recognition, and still yielded inconsistent results. Taken together, the available evidence does not support the argument that self advantage results from its inherent familiarity. How- ever, a distinction between material familiarity and task familiarity proposed based on the above findings and real -life experience should be noted. The former means exposure experience to specific stimuli, while the latter familiarity refers to whether participants have much experience of processing stimuli in some ways. The two kinds of familiarity is dissociable in that participants may be more fa- miliar with one kind of stimuli related to him/herself than others but have no more experience of processing it in some specific ways, and vice versa. For example, one usually has more experience of searching for others＇ faces than his/her own face despite his/herhigh familiarity with his/her own face. It was proposed that future research may need to pay more attention to the effect of task familiarity.