Do humans spontaneously take the perspective of others?

Cole, Geoff G.; Atkinson, Mark A.; Le, An T.; Smith, Daniel T.

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.01.007

Cited by 73 publications

(148 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Namely, the level to which people engage in level-1 PT in the dot perspective task has been found to be influenced by participants' emotional states (Bukowski & Samson, 2016;Todd & Simpson, 2016), as well as the identity of the avatar: one that is representing the self or a stranger (Mattan et al, 2015). The selectivity of implicit PT contradicts approaches (Cole, Atkinson, Le, & Smith, 2016;Santiesteban, Catmur, Hopkins, Bird, & Heyes, 2014) postulating that perspective interference reflects a 'blind', domain-general, non-social process.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Level‐2 perspectives computed quickly and spontaneously: Evidence from eight‐ to 9.5‐year‐old children

Elekes

Varga

Király

2017

British J of Dev Psycho

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It has been widely assumed that computing how a scene looks from another perspective (level-2 perspective taking, PT) is an effortful process, as opposed to the automatic capacity of tracking visual access to objects (level-1 PT). Recently, adults have been found to compute both forms of visual perspectives in a quick but context-sensitive way, indicating that the two functions share more features than previously assumed. However, the developmental literature still shows the dissociation between automatic level-1 and effortful level-2 PT. In the current paper, we report an experiment showing that in a minimally social situation, participating in a number verification task with an adult confederate, eight- to 9.5-year-old children demonstrate similar online level-2 PT capacities as adults. Future studies need to address whether online PT shows selectivity in children as well and develop paradigms that are adequate to test preschoolers' online level-2 PT abilities. Statement of Contribution What is already known on this subject? Adults can access how objects appear to others (level-2 perspective) spontaneously and online Online level-1, but not level-2 perspective taking (PT) has been documented in school-aged children What the present study adds? Eight- to 9.5-year-olds performed a number verification task with a confederate who had the same task Children showed similar perspective interference as adults, indicating spontaneous level-2 PT Not only agent-object relations but also object appearances are computed online by eight- to 9.5-year-olds.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Level‐2 perspectives computed quickly and spontaneously: Evidence from eight‐ to 9.5‐year‐old children

Elekes

Varga

Király

2017

British J of Dev Psycho

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“…Further research has focused on whether the perspective may not be a spontaneous phenomenon. If this is the case, then RAS would be only modulated by perceptual characteristics of the cue, while perspective taking would be due to top-down processes [18][19][20][21]. These authors noted that the human avatar employed by Samson et al [7] was unable to generate an attentional shift when the target discs were presented within 300 ms from the presentation of the cue.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Perspective Taking on Attention: A Review of the Special Issue on the Reflexive Attentional Shift Phenomenon

Pesimena

Wilson

Bertamini

et al. 2019

Vision

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Attention is a process that alters how cognitive resources are allocated, and it allows individuals to efficiently process information at the attended location. The presence of visual or auditory cues in the environment can direct the focus of attention toward certain stimuli even if the cued stimuli are not the individual’s primary target. Samson et al. demonstrated that seeing another person in the scene (i.e., a person-like cue) caused a delay in responding to target stimuli not visible to that person: “alter-centric intrusion.” This phenomenon, they argue, is dependent upon the fact that the cue used resembled a person as opposed to a more generic directional indicator. The characteristics of the cue are the core of the debate of this special issue. Some maintain that the perceptual-directional characteristics of the cue are sufficient to generate the bias while others argue that the cuing is stronger when the cue has social characteristics (relates to what another individual can perceive). The research contained in this issue confirms that human attention is biased by the presence of a directional cue. We discuss and compare the different studies. The pattern that emerges seems to suggest that the social relevance of the cue is necessary in some contexts but not in others, depending on the cognitive demand of the experimental task. One possibility is that the social mechanisms are involved in perspective taking when the task is cognitively demanding, while they may not play a role in automatic attention allocation.

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“…Santiesteban and colleagues observed prolonged reaction time even in experiments where the avatar was replaced by an arrow, suggesting that arrow cues have the same attention orienting effect as does the avatar [27, 28]. Modifications of the dot perspective task (such as use of transparent and opaque barriers or the use of transparent and opaque goggles) yielded results inconsistent with spontaneous perspective taking [29]. Though, Furlanetto et al [30] using the dot perspective task demonstrated that the consistency effect occurred only when the avatar wore the transparent goggles but not for the opaque goggles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic Comparison of Brain Imaging Meta-Analyses of ToM with vPT

Arora

Schurz

Perner

2017

BioMed Research International

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In visual perspective taking (vPT) one has to concern oneself with what other people see and how they see it. Since seeing is a mental state, developmental studies have discussed vPT within the domain of “theory of mind (ToM)” but imaging studies have not treated it as such. Based on earlier results from several meta-analyses, we tested for the overlap of visual perspective taking studies with 6 different kinds of ToM studies: false belief, trait judgments, strategic games, social animations, mind in the eyes, and rational actions. Joint activation was observed between the vPT task and some kinds of ToM tasks in regions involving the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), anterior precuneus, left middle occipital gyrus/extrastriate body area (EBA), and the left inferior frontal and precentral gyrus. Importantly, no overlap activation was found for the vPT tasks with the joint core of all six kinds of ToM tasks. This raises the important question of what the common denominator of all tasks that fall under the label of “theory of mind” is supposed to be if visual perspective taking is not one of them.

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Do humans spontaneously take the perspective of others?

Cited by 73 publications

References 18 publications

Level‐2 perspectives computed quickly and spontaneously: Evidence from eight‐ to 9.5‐year‐old children

Level‐2 perspectives computed quickly and spontaneously: Evidence from eight‐ to 9.5‐year‐old children

The Role of Perspective Taking on Attention: A Review of the Special Issue on the Reflexive Attentional Shift Phenomenon

Systematic Comparison of Brain Imaging Meta-Analyses of ToM with vPT

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