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Recent theoretical accounts maintain that core components of attentional functioning are preferentially tuned to self-relevant information. Evidence in support of this viewpoint is equivocal, however, with research overly reliant on personally significant (i.e., familiar) stimulus inputs (e.g., faces, forenames) and a diverse range of methodologies. Addressing these limitations, here we utilised arbitrary items (i.e., geometric shapes) and administered the Attention Network Test (ANT) to establish the extent to which self-relevance (vs friend-relevance) moderates the three subsystems of attentional functioning-alerting, orienting, and executive control. The results revealed that only executive control was sensitive to the meaning of the stimuli, such that conflict resolution was enhanced following the presentation of self-associated compared with friend-associated shapes (i.e., cues). Probing the origin of this effect, a further computational analysis (i.e., Shrinking Spotlight Diffusion Model analysis) indicated that self-relevance facilitated the narrowing of visual attention. These findings highlight when and how the personal significance of otherwise trivial material modulates attentional processing.

It is well documented that stimuli associated with the self are easier to process than identical material paired with other people (i.e., self-prioritization effect). Surprisingly, however, relatively little is known about how self-relevance impacts core aspects of executive functioning, notably response inhibition. Accordingly, here we used a stop-signal task to establish how effectively responses toward self-relevant (vs. other-relevant) stimuli can intentionally be inhibited. In the context of personal possession, participants were required to classify stimuli (i.e., pens and pencils) based on ownership (i.e., owned-by-self vs. owned-by-friend/stranger), unless an occasional auditory tone indicated that the response should be withheld. The results revealed the benefits of self-relevance on response inhibition. Compared with items owned by a friend or stranger, responses to self-owned objects were inhibited more efficiently. These findings confirm that self-relevance facilitates executive control.