{"pk":50062,"title":"Self-Association Makes It Easier to Track Multiple Objects But Within Capacity Limitations: A Multiple-Object Tracking Investigation","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The Self-Prioritization Effect (SPE) suggests that\nassociating stimuli with the ‘self' affords processing\nadvantages in perception (Sui & Humphreys, 2012),\nattention (Keyes & Brady, 2010), long-term memory\n(Turk et al., 2008; Klein, 2012), working memory (Yin\net al., 2019; Roy et al., 2023), and decision-making\n(Polman, 2012; Hu et al., 2019). An important aspect\nof working memory is the ability for continuous\ntracking, maintenance & updation. The Multiple-\nObject Tracking (MOT) paradigm involves constant\nattention and maintenance in working memory and\nonline decision-making. The current study was\ndesigned to test the tracking performances for self-\nassociated stimuli (neutral shapes and colored shapes)\ncompared to stranger-associated stimuli (neutral\nshapes and colored shapes) in a multiple object\ntracking (MOT) paradigm. Additionally, we used\nthree different set-sizes (6,8,10), where half of the\nshapes were targets, and half were distractors, to check\nfor boundary conditions with respect to WM load. We\nfound that with increasing set-size, tracking\nperformance decreases significantly. Also, whether\ntargets or distracters belong to the same\n(homogeneous) or different categories\n(heterogeneous) moderates the tracking performance\nof the participants, as target shapes becomes more\ncomplicated when the target and distracters are of the\nsame type, i.e., the homogenous conditions. We found\nthat the tracking performances of the self-associated\nshapes were significantly better than the stranger-\nassociated target shapes when the target and\ndistractors were of different categories (heterogeneous\ncondition) but only upto set-size 8 due to working\nmemory limits. Additionally, we found that self-\nassociated shapes or colored shapes were significantly\npoorer in tracking when target and distractors were of\nsame categories (homogeneous condition) within the\nworking memory limits. These results suggest that\nindividuals can pay more attention to self-associated\nstimuli, which are maintained in working memory and\nhave better focus of attention, despite limited capacity\nWM resources.\nKeywords: self-association, tracking, multiple\nobject tracking, working memory, visual working\nmemory, identity, location.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Memory; Perception; Computer-based experiment"}],"section":"Abstracts with Poster Presentation (accepted as Abstracts)","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1sv4h9pz","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Irfan","middle_name":"","last_name":"Ahmad","name_suffix":"","institution":"Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur","department":""},{"first_name":"Ark","middle_name":"","last_name":"Verma","name_suffix":"","institution":"Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/50062/galley/38024/download/"}]}