Inferring Mental Representational Structure of the Self in Time, Space, and Social Domains via a Modified Redundancy Gain Paradigm

Abstract

The ability to project oneself into an alternative situation is an essential human capacity. While research showing that such abilities base human decision making is abundant, the cognitive organization of the self across social, temporal, and spatial domains constituting the basic materials for self-projection is not clear. The current study introduces a new paradigm to gauge the representational overlaps among social (me myself), temporal (me now) and spatial (me here) selves by utilizing a shape-label matching task in a modified redundancy gain paradigm. Based on the level of redundancy gain effects, we infer a representational overlap among social, temporal, and spatial selves in a systematic way. Our results showed that the spatial self resides at the core of the self-representation which conceptually extends to the temporal and ultimately, to the social self, echoing the human developmental stages of self-representation. This novel finding advances the understanding and theorizing of the self-concept as an orderly structured mental construct.