Inclined to see it your way: Do altercentric intrusion effects in visual perspective taking reflect an intrinsically social process?

Abstract

It has been suggested that some aspects of mental state understanding recruit a rudimentary, but fast and efficient, processing system, demonstrated by the obligatory slowing down of judgements about what the self can see when this is incongruent with what another can see. We tested the social nature of this system by investigating to what extent these altercentric intrusions are elicited under conditions that differed in their social relevance and, further, how these related to self-reported social perspective taking and empathy. In Experiment 1, adult participants were asked to make “self” or “other” perspective-taking judgements during congruent (“self” and “other” can see the same items) or incongruent conditions (“self” and “other” cannot see the same items) in conditions that were social (i.e., involving a social agent), semisocial (an arrow), or nonsocial (a dual-coloured block). Reaction time indices of altercentric intrusion effects were present across all conditions, but were significantly stronger for the social than for the less social conditions. Self-reported perspective taking and empathy correlated with altercentric intrusion effects in the social condition only. In Experiment 2, the significant correlations for the social condition were replicated, but this time with gaze duration indices of altercentric intrusion effects. Findings are discussed with regard to the degree to which this rudimentary system is socially specialized and how it is linked to more conceptual understanding.

Eye tracking reveals the cost of switching between self and other perspectives in a visual perspective-taking task

“…each saw a different number of discs), while in others they were consistent. To examine the influence of perspective switching, the order of trials was pseudorandomised such that half the trials were preceded by a trial with the same perspective cue Behavioural results largely replicated previous studies of this kind Surtees & Apperly, 2012;Qureshi et al, 2010;Nielsen et al, 2015), showing higher accuracy and faster response times when participants shared the same visual perspective as the on-screen avatar, compared to when the two perspectives were different. However in our study the reduced accuracy on inconsistent versus consistent trials was only significant when participants were prompted to take the avatarÕs perspective, and not when taking the self perspective.…”

“…Crucially, this methodology should also provide a means of disentangling traditional mentalising accounts for spontaneous visual 7 perspective-taking from directional (or sub-mentalising) accounts, which suggest that attention is driven by domain-general processes based on directional features of the avatar (Heyes, 2014;Santiesteban, Catmur, Hopkins, Bird, & Heyes, 2014). Specifically, Santiesteban et al (2014) found a comparable reaction time difference between consistent and inconsistent trials when the central avatar was replaced with an arrow (but see Schurz, Kronbichler, Weissengruber, Surtees, Samson, &Perner, 2015 andNielsen et al, 2015). Since arrows provide directional, but not agentive, cues the authors interpret this as evidence against an implicit mentalising account of the altercentric effect, and instead supports the role of attentional processes.…”

“…First, we aimed to use eye-tracking to examine the cognitive mechanisms that underlie visual perspective-taking. Eye-tracking has been applied to this visual perspective-taking paradigm once before (Nielsen et al, 2015), but with a fairly rudimentary measure of gaze duration collapsed across a large area of interest that included the avatar and areas in front and behind the avatar (including the discs). This study showed that gaze durations were elevated when the self and other perspectives were inconsistent, thus reflecting both egocentric and altercentric interference.…”

Do humans spontaneously take the perspective of others?

“…It is worth noting that we do not argue that the dot perspective task does not involve any social processing mechanisms, only those concerned with spontaneous perspective taking. This is based on recent evidence by Nielsen, Slade, Levy, and Holmes (2015) who showed that the degree of spontaneous perspective taking positively correlates with self-reported empathy. Finally, future workers may want to consider employing the occluding barrier technique when using other paradigms suggestive of spontaneous perspective taking.…”

Reasoning About Visibility in Mirrors: A Comparison Between a Human Observer and a Camera

“…In recent years, a body of research has emerged on social perspective-taking, which argues that taking a perspective is an intrinsically social process that relates to Theory of Mind (Samson, Apperly, Braithwaite, Andrews, & Bodley Scott, 2010;Nielsen et al, 2015). It has also been suggested that when evaluating their own perspective, people are affected by the perspective of other individuals (Samson et al, 2010).…”