Henryk Bukowski organized the symposium "Novel approaches to study self-other distinction in different domains and in both typically developed and clinical populations". 

The speakers: Ekaterina Pronizius, Ulrike Kraemer, Rebecca Boehme, Henryk Bukowski

To navigate interpersonal interactions, we need to develop and maintain a clear boundary between “self” and “other”. This ability to distinguish between self and other is referred to as self-other distinction (SOD), which encompasses perceptual, cognitive and affective domains. Dysfunctional SOD might contribute to psychiatric disorders, which is why it is important to develop reliable and valid methods to characterize interindividual differences in SOD. In this symposium, we presented novel methods to study SOD across different domains and discussed findings on the behavioral and neural processes associated with (dys)functional SOD.

Talk 1 - Ekaterina Pronizius

Self-Other Distinction Self-reported Questionnaire (SOD-SQ): A scale to measure SOD in the everyday life of healthy and clinical populations

• To smoothly navigate the social world, we benefit from a permeable barrier between the “self” and the “other”: Information about other people is efficiently processed and often spontaneously comes to our mind whereas information about oneself can be efficiently accessed to guess other people’s mental states. However, this information about others (e.g., their opinions or emotions) can also intrude or invade our minds whereas our own opinions or emotions may bias and mislead our understanding of other people. Being able to distinguish and maintain a clear barrier between the self and the other is an essential mechanism to navigate the social world, called self-other distinction (also referred to as self-other control).
• Individual differences in self-other distinction (SOD) capacities are clinically observed and empirically evidenced via experimental paradigms that induce egocentric and altercentric biases. Aiming to have a more practical and ecological measure of SOD, we developed a self-report questionnaire that captures everyday life manifestations of SOD ranging from well-functioning SOD to clinically dysfunctional SOD.
• To separately measure distinct components of SOD, the questionnaire has 4 quadrants crossing the direction of the intrusion (self-to-other versus other-to-self) and the domain of intrusion (emotional versus cognitive domain), plus an additional subscale to capture self-other awareness. The scale went through multiple rounds of empirical validation that helped inform and clarify the definition and structure of SOD. In this talk, we presented the Self-Other Distinction Scale, how we constructed SOD, and the empirical evidence of validity.