Visual perspective taking in young and older adults

Abstract

Background: Advanced age is associated with difficulties in understanding the emotional or mental state of others. However, little is known about the underlying cognitive processes that may contribute. We investigate how perspective taking changes in older adults and how this relates to executive and social cognition.Method: Using a novel visual perspective taking (VPT) task, 50 healthy older adults and 122 healthy young adults completed measures of implicit VPT (i.e. egocentric-perspective only) and level one (i.e number of balls seen from egocentric/allocentric) and two (i.e. more balls on left or right from egocentric/allocentric) explicit VPT. Age differences on accuracy and response time (RT) were analysed. Baseline executive and social cognitive functioning were assessed for processing speed, updating, response inhibition, set-switching, affective theory of mind (ToM), and social-emotional cognition. Regression models were used to determine the relationship between VPT, executive, social cognition and ageing. Results: Older adults were slower when required to switch to the allocentric perspective in both level one and two VPT tasks. Congruency effects (impaired performance when scenes were incongruent with the alternate perspective) were identified for accuracy and RT for the egocentric and allocentric conditions of both level one and two explicit VPT. Older adults also displayed a greater congruency effect during the egocentric trials of the level two VPT task. Younger adults displayed a greater congruency effect for errors on the egocentric condition of the level one VPT task. Congruency effect for errors on the allocentric condition of both level one and two VPT tasks correlated with social emotional cognition, such that a greater ability to inhibit the egocentric perspective was associated with better social cognitive performance. Switching to the allocentric perspective was associated with both processing speed and response inhibition and these partially, but not completely, explained the age-related effects on switch cost. A robust implicit VPT effect was identified in both young and older adults. Conclusion: Social difficulties may arise in older adults due to difficulty switching to the allocentric perspective. A greater tendency to rotate into allocentric perspectives during egocentric judgements may reflect a weaker embodied self in older adults. Executive and social cognition are associated with perspective taking ability, but these only partially explain age-related performance differences. Lower level perspective taking difficulty should be considered in studies of social difficulties in advanced age.

External Human-Machine Interfaces on Automated Vehicles: Effects on Pedestrian Crossing Decisions

“…For example, when the smiley changes to "sad," this could mean several things: A participant may think that the sad face pertains to him/herself (an egocentric perspective) or to the vehicle (an allocentric perspective). Research suggests that switching from an egocentric to an allocentric visual perspective absorbs cognitive processing time (Martin et al, 2018). In particular, young children (Ampofo-Boateng & Thomson, 1991;Epley, Keysar, Van Boven, & Gilovich, 2004;Piaget & Inhelder, 1956) and older persons appear to have difficulty in taking another agent's perspective (Martin et al, 2018).…”

Common and unique effects of HD-tDCS to the social brain across cultural groups

“…The visual perspective taking (VPT) task has been described in detail previously (Martin, Dzafic, et al, 2017;Martin, Huang, et al, 2018;Martin et al, 2019). In brief, three separate tests were administered measuring implicit, explicit level one and explicit level two.…”

“…The main outcome of interest was the congruency effect (incongruentcongruent) for both egocentric and allocentric conditions. The avatar and traffic light factor was only of interest in the implicit VPT task and was collapsed across for the explicit tasks, similar to previous studies (Martin, Dzafic, et al, 2017;Martin, Huang, et al, 2018;Martin et al, 2019;Santiesteban, Catmur, Hopkins, Bird, & Heyes, 2014).…”

Dissociable roles for the rTPJ and dmPFC in self-other processing: a HD-tDCS study

“…As HD--tDCS avoids current spread to distant brain regions (Bortoletto et al, 2016;Martin, Huang, et al, 2017), such studies could also disentangle stimulation effects due to current spread and direct modulation of neural network nodes functionally connected to the stimulation site. Much work is still required at the basic neurophysiological level to understand how much current reaches the brain and how it alters neuronal function (Huang et al, 2018). However, well controlled studies measuring site and task specificity such as the current study, provide the behavioural evidence to encourage future studies into the plausible explanations of the underlying neural effects of electrical stimulation.…”

“…The visual perspective task (VPT; Martin et al, 2018) involved three separate tests measuring level one VPT (implicit and explicit) and level two VPT (explicit). All tests involved a street scene with tennis balls, rubbish bins, and either a human avatar or a traffic light directly in front of the gaze of the subject at one of three positions on the street --far, middle, or near (see Figure 1).…”