Self-Construal Priming Modulates Ensemble Perception of Multiple-Face Identities.

Shenli Peng,Chang Hong Liu,Wenfeng Chen,Ling Zhang,Runzhou Xu,Ping Hu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01096

Shenli Peng, Chang Hong Liu + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01096

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Abstract

This study explored the modulatory role of independent/interdependent self-construal on ensemble perception. Two experiments were conducted to study the effect of self-construal on ensemble coding of multiple-face identities (Experiment 1) and dot size (Experiment 2) separately. Before the implicit ensemble perception task, participants in both experiments were either primed with independent or interdependent self-construal via a well-validated pronoun circle task, in which they were exposed to either singular (“I,” “me,” and “my”) or plural (“We,” “us,” and “our”) pronouns in essays. The results showed that interdependent self-construal (vs. independent self-construal) featured as global processing and emphasizing interconnectedness with others enhanced the ensemble coding of high-level features (e.g., identity in Experiment 1) but not of low-level features (e.g., size in Experiment 2). To the best of our knowledge, this study was the first to investigate the role of self-construal on ensemble representations. In sum, the results of the current study supported the domain-specific mechanism of ensemble perception on one hand, and extended the effect of self-construal on single face recognition to multiple face recognition on the other hand.

Highlights

Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
The results showed that interdependent self-construal featured as global processing and emphasizing interconnectedness with others enhanced the ensemble coding of high-level features but not of low-level features
The present study is the first to explore the effect of independent/ interdependent self-construal priming on ensemble perception, which refers to the rapid extraction of ensemble properties of multiple stimuli

Summary

Introduction

Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Given that evidence shows ensemble perception occurs in a remarkably short time (e.g., Haberman and Whitney, 2009), many researchers have assumed that ensemble properties are extracted by pooling information from all or most items in a set, which is a global process requiring distributed attention (Chong and Treisman, 2005; Alvarez, 2011; Srinivasan, 2017). Chong and Treisman (2005) tested whether distributed attention was conducive to ensemble perception by letting participants accomplish a mean size extraction task combined with a concurrent task requiring either global or local attention. The results indicated that participants did better in mean size extraction tasks, when they were combined with tasks requiring global attention rather than local attention, which suggests that representing ensemble properties requires global attention to the set information

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