The Influence Of Self-awareness On Reward Processing

The concepts of the self and reward are both important topics in the field of psychology.Great progress has been made recently in understanding how the self and reward are represented and processed in the human brain.Although self-processing and reward processing may appear to be unrelated,recent results have found a close relationship between self-processing and reward processing.However,previous studies often employed the functional magnetic resonance imaging(f MRI)technique to explore the relationship between self and reward processing by comparing the overlaps between the self and reward networks.Few studies have explored the ways in which self processing influences reward processing.Self-awareness,as an important part of self-processing,refers to a state in which individuals pay attention to themselves and experience heightened awareness of their own internal feelings and beliefs.Previous studies have also found that the priming of any dimension of the self would prime individual self-awareness.Therefore,in order to provide a better understanding of the interaction between self and reward.The present study employed the event-related potentials(ERPs)technique to investigate how the priming of self-awareness influences the reward processing.Specifically,in this study,the scrambled sentence task(SST)was used to implicitly prime the self-awareness of participants and investigate the influence of self-awareness on reward processing from the reward anticipation process and the outcome evaluation process.In the study 1,the scrambled sentence task was used to implicitly prime the self-awareness of participants and investigate whether reward anticipation processing in a monetary incentntive delay(MID)task is modulated by the self-awareness.The study 1 was 2(Priming Type: self-awareness,other-awareness)× 3(Cue Type: no-reward anticipation cue,reward anticipation cue,loss anticipation cue)in the interior design.The brain event-related potentials(ERPs)were recorded while 29 normal adults performed a monetary incentntive delay task.At the behavioral level,the study found that there was no significant difference in response time between the self-awareness priming condition and the other-awareness condition(i.e.,the control condition).However,at the electrophysiological level,the study found that the self-awareness priming condition evokd a smaller cue-N2 than the control condition in the loss anticipation cue condition during the cue-evaluation stage.Moreover,self-awareness priming condition evokd a smaller contingent negative variation(CNV)than the control condition in the loss anticipation cue condition during the motor-preparation stage.However,there was no significant difference in stimulus-preceding negativity(SPN)between the self-awareness priming condition and the control condition.In the study 2,the scrambled sentence task was used to implicitly prime the self-awareness of participants and investigate whether outcome evaluations in a gambling task is modulated by the self-awareness.The study 2 was 2(Priming Type: self-awareness,other-awareness)× 2(Outcome Feedback Type: win feedback,loss feedback)in the interior design.The brain event-related potentials(ERPs)were recorded while 27 normal adults performed a simple gambling task.The ERP analysis focused on the feedback-related negativity(FRN)component and Feedback-P3 component.At the behavioral level,the study found that there was no significant difference in reaction times between the self-awareness priming condition and the control condition.However,at the electrophysiological level,the study found that the self-awareness priming condition evokd a smaller FRN than the control condition in the loss condition.Moreover,the study also found that the self-awareness priming condition evoked a larger feedback-P3 than the control condition.This study shows that:(1)The priming of self-awareness can reduce the neural sensitivity of people to the loss anticipation cue in the cue-evaluation stage and the motor-preparation stage during the reward anticipation processing.(2)The priming of self-awareness can help people reduce their neural sensitivity to loss feedback at the early semi-automatic outcome evaluation stage and increase a late deliberate,top-down evaluation of outcome information.(3)The priming of self-awareness can reduce the neural sensitivity to loss anticipation and loss outcome during the reward processing.In summary,the present findings have confirmed and extend the previous research on the relationship between self and reward processing.The reward anticipation process and the outcome evaluation process can be modulated by the priming of self-awareness,indicating that self and reward are not separate processes but rather share a tight bond in cognitive processing.In addition,the present findings also suggest that self-awareness can help people cope with negative information during the reward processing,thereby reducing neural sensitivity to negative information,which provide direct evidence of the adaptive function of self-awareness on negative experience.