Self-Referencing Bias in Psychiatric Inpatients

People tend to detect and recognise self-related information more quickly and efficiently than other kinds of information. For example, in a cocktail party, people are usually able to attend to just one conversation at a time. Messages from unattended conversations are rarely registered. However, most people would still hear their own name mentioned in unattended conversations. Research has shown that this self-referencing advantage manifests an individual's normal cognitive function and emotional wellbeing. It may be influenced by self worth and strength of self-esteem. Changes in self-related processing are hypothesised in various psychiatric conditions such as dissociative identity disorder and affective disorders, but the connection is poorly understood. Existing research mainly relies on self-report measures, which can be subjective and time consuming. This project will initiate a new approach that the investigators have developed to objectively measure self-related processing. The aim is to investigate how patients suffering from common psychiatric disorders respond to self-related information relative to age-matched control participants. The investigators also hope to establish whether the objective measurement of the self can form a new pathway to improve early diagnosis of mental health issues.