We propose a new account of how self-reference affects information processing. We report
evidence that self-reference affects the binding of memory to source, the integration of parts …

Self representation is fundamental to mental functions. While the self has mostly been
studied in traditional psychophilosophical terms ('self as subject'), recent laboratory work …

Highlights•Self-processing interacts with all the three attentional systems (alerting, orienting,
and executive control) to produce optimal behavior.•Self-prioritization effects occur in a …

People show systematic biases in perception, memory, and attention to favor information
related to themselves over information related to other people. Researchers have examined …

People preferentially attend to external stimuli that are related to themselves compared with
others. Whether a similar self-reference bias applies to internal representations, such as …

Humans show a pervasive bias for processing self-over other-related information, including
in working memory (WM), where people prioritize the maintenance of self-(over other-) …

Personally relevant stimuli exert a powerful influence on social cognition. What is not yet
fully understood, however, is how early in the processing stream self-relevance influences …

A stable self-representation has an intrinsically beneficial connotation for information
processing: it allows the individual to flexibly adapt to different contexts, while prioritizing …

Recent research has revealed that self-referential processing enhances perceptual
judgments—the so-called self-prioritization effect. The extent and origin of this effect remains …

Self-related information is under many circumstances processed in a preferred and biased
way, leading to what has been termed the self-prioritisation effect (SPE). The SPE has been …