Zheng Yingcan, Xiao Zilun, Liu Yong, Zhou Xin
Developmental Psychology for Armyman, Department of Medical Psychology, Army Medical University, Chongqing, China.
School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 6;13:770604. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.770604. eCollection 2022.
People have three cognitive representations of the self, namely, the individual, relational, and collective selves (CS), which are indispensable components of selfhood but not necessarily given equal preference. Previous studies found that people displayed varied self-hierarchy in miscellaneous tasks involving different research materials that had pre-existing learned associations established over long periods of time. Therefore, this study tries to explore a purer self-hierarchy without the influence of research materials, using perceptual matching tasks. The behavioral and event-related potentials' (ERPs) findings showed that people recognized information association with their individual self (IS) faster compared with their relational (RS) and CS. Smaller N2, stronger P3 and late positive complex (LPC) amplitudes were evoked during IS compared with RS and CS. However, the three selves evoked equal P2 amplitudes at the early processing stage. Moreover, CS showed a weaker advantage than RS, demonstrating a longer reaction time, lower d prime, and weaker P3 and LPC amplitudes in the parietal region. Overall, self-hierarchy during simple perceptual processing manifested as IS > RS > CS at the late processing stage but manifested as IS = RS = CS at the early processing stage. Self-hierarchy varies according to the processing stage, even without meaningful information and during the simple perception processing. This result provides direct evidence that all selves can be tagged with neutral actions, which would fit the idea of an organism attuned to self-survival at multiple processing levels.
人们对自我有三种认知表征，即个体自我、关系自我和集体自我（CS），它们是自我的不可或缺的组成部分，但不一定受到同等程度的重视。先前的研究发现，在涉及经过长时间建立起预先存在的学习关联的不同研究材料的各种任务中，人们表现出不同的自我层次结构。因此，本研究试图使用感知匹配任务来探索一种不受研究材料影响的更纯粹的自我层次结构。行为和事件相关电位（ERP）的研究结果表明，与关系自我（RS）和集体自我相比，人们识别与个体自我（IS）相关的信息更快。与RS和CS相比，在处理个体自我时诱发的N2波更小，P3波和晚期正复合波（LPC）的波幅更强。然而，在早期处理阶段，三种自我诱发的P2波幅相等。此外，集体自我比关系自我表现出更弱的优势，表现为反应时间更长、d'值更低，以及顶叶区域的P3波和LPC波幅更弱。总体而言，在简单感知处理过程中的自我层次结构在后期处理阶段表现为个体自我>关系自我>集体自我，但在早期处理阶段表现为个体自我=关系自我=集体自我。即使在没有有意义信息的情况下以及在简单感知处理过程中，自我层次结构也会根据处理阶段而变化。这一结果提供了直接证据，表明所有自我都可以用中性行为来标记，这符合生物体在多个处理层面上适应自我生存的观点。
