Dissociating processes underlying level-1 visual perspective taking in adults

Increased interference from conflicting perspectives and gender differences: A longitudinal study during adolescence

Adolescents need to develop adequate perspective-taking skills to successfully navigate their increasingly complex social environments. This study investigated adolescents' development of the cognitive processes of egocentric and altercentric interference that influence perspective-taking abilities. Using the Dot Perspective Task, participants' (N = 803; 50.9% female) egocentric and altercentric interference was measured during 3 consecutive years from 12 to 14 years of age. Linear mixed model analyses showed that whereas overall task performance improved over time, egocentric and altercentric interference increased over time. These results suggest that perspective taking develops at slower rates when there are conflicting perspectives than in situations with no conflict. Moreover, we found that girls showed less egocentric interference than boys. This result provides task-based evidence that supports previous findings of higher self-reported perspective taking in adolescent girls than in adolescent boys.

Manipulating avatar age and gender in level-2 visual perspective taking

Visual perspective taking (VPT) represents how the world appears from another person's position. The age, group status and emotional displays of the other person have been shown to affect task performance, but tasks often confound social and spatial outcome measures by embedding perspective taking in explicitly social contexts or theory-of-mind reasoning. Furthermore, while previous research has suggested that visual perspective taking may be impacted by avatar characteristics, it is unknown whether this is driven by general group processing or a specific deficit in mentalizing about outgroups, for example, children. Therefore, using a minimally social task (i.e., the task was not communicative, and acknowledging the "mind" of the avatar was not necessitated), we examined whether avatar age and avatar gender affect performance on simpler (low angular disparity) and more effortful, embodied (high angular disparity) perspective judgments. Ninety-two participants represented the visuospatial perspectives of a boy, girl, man, or woman who were presented at various angular disparities. A target object was placed in front of the avatar and participants responded to the orientation of the object from the avatar's position. The findings suggest that social features of visuospatial perspective taking (VSPT) are processed separately from the fundamental spatial computations. Further, Level-2 VSPT appears to be affected by general group categorization (e.g., age and gender) rather than a deficit in mentalizing about a specific outgroup (e.g., children).

Spontaneous perspective-taking and its relation to schizotypy

INTRODUCTION

Patients with schizophrenia differ from healthy controls in the extent that they spontaneously take another's perspective. For such effects, it is difficult to separate the influence of schizophrenia from multiple potential confounders. Here, for the first time, associations between spontaneous perspective-taking and schizotypy were investigated in a nonclinical population.

METHODS

Adult participants completed both a Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ-BRU) and a novel online adaptation of a visual perspective-taking task that required participants to make judgements both from their own perspective and that of a human avatar.

RESULTS

Response times were elevated when the avatar's perspective was inconsistent with that of the participant, providing evidence of spontaneous perspective-taking. This demonstrates that the visual perspective-taking task can be successfully implemented in an online format. However, schizotypy did not predict these spontaneous perspective-taking effects.

CONCLUSIONS

Unlike explicit mentalising, this form of implicit mentalising is not affected by nonclinical manifestations of schizotypy traits. This implies that impairment of general neurocognitive function contributes to altered spontaneous perspective-taking in schizophrenia. A novel account based on the cognitive control processes involved in perspective selection and the role of attention in perspective calculation reconciles apparently contradictory findings of earlier studies comparing patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls.

Are knowledge- and belief-reasoning automatic, and is this the right question?

Phillips et al. conclude that current evidence supports knowledge-, but not belief-reasoning as being automatic. We suggest four reasons why this is an oversimplified answer to a question that might not have a clear-cut answer: (1) knowledge and beliefs can be incompletely equated to perceptual states, (2) sensitivity to mental states does not necessitate representation, (3) automaticity is not a single categorical feature, and (4) how we represent others' minds is dependent on social context.

Inhibitory Control was needed in Level-1 Visual Perspective Taking: A Developing Negative Priming Study

Aim

Previous studies have found that both children and adults have difficulties in dealing with judgments in which self-perspective differs from other-perspective, even in level-1 perspective-taking. However, the underlying cognitive mechanism of this is still unclear. In the present study, we designed a negative priming (NP) paradigm of the dot-perspective task to examine whether inhibitory control was required to overcome egocentric bias in level-1 visual perspective-taking in children and adults. We observed an NP effect in both children (n= 43) and adults (n= 40). However, there was no significant difference between children and adults on the magnitude of the NP effect, indicating that when children could overcome the egocentric bias, they had inhibitory control ability comparable to that of adults in level-1 other-perspective-taking.

Background

Visual perspective-taking is an indispensable ability in social interaction; hence, it has attracted great attention from researchers. However, the mechanism underlying this process remains unclear. The present study aimed to investigate the role of inhibitory control in level-1 visual perspective-taking from a developmental perspective in order to understand the performance differences in perspective-taking tasks between children and adults.

Methods

The NP paradigm was applied to the dot-perspective task. Participants' response times (RTs) and error rates (ERs) were recorded during the experiment. A 2 (trial type: test vs control, within-subject) × 2 (age: children vs adults) mix-design ANOVA was used to analyse the RTs and ERs data separately.

Results

We observed an NP effect for both children (7.31, t (42) = 2.78, p < 0.01, Cohen's d = 0.22) and adults (27.58, t (39) = 2.31, p < 0.05, Cohen's d = 0.21). However, the difference in the magnitude of the NP effect between children and adults was not significant (t (81) = 0.54, p = 0.59).

Conclusion

Inhibitory control was needed to overcome egocentric bias in level-1 visual perspective-taking for both children and adults. Moreover, when children could overcome egocentric bias, they had an inhibitory control ability comparable to that of adults.

No need to take what you already have: perspective taking's effect on empathic concern for low-need targets

Recent studies have (quite persuasively) challenged a previous body of work suggesting that taking the perspective of targets described as experiencing highly distressing plights would increase empathic concern for those targets. In the current study, we test whether perspective-taking might still increase empathic concern for targets in less negative predicaments. College participants (N = 303) were given either perspective-taking instructions, or no instructions, before reading posts from targets describing negative, but not terrible, experiences. Consistent with recent results challenging the effects of perspective taking, even for these low-need targets, perspective-taking instructions had no effect on empathic concern (nor on other empathic emotions). However, participants in the perspective-taking condition were more likely to reach out to the targets by writing them a note in response to the negative experience. Results are discussed in terms of perspective-taking instructions having little effect on what perspective takers feel but possibly some effect on what they do.

Visual perspective-taking in complex natural scenes

Studies of visual perspective-taking have shown that adults can rapidly and accurately compute their own and other peoples’ viewpoints, but they experience difficulties when the two perspectives are inconsistent. We tested whether these egocentric (i.e., interference from one’s own perspective) and altercentric biases (i.e., interference from another person’s perspective) persist in ecologically valid complex environments. Participants (N = 150) completed a dot-probe visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in natural scenes containing real people, first only according to their own perspective and then judging both their own and another person’s perspective. Results showed that the other person’s perspective did not disrupt self perspective-taking judgements when the other perspective was not explicitly prompted. In contrast, egocentric and altercentric biases were found when participants were prompted to switch between self and other perspectives. These findings suggest that altercentric visual perspective-taking can be activated spontaneously in complex real-world contexts, but is subject to both top-down and bottom-up influences, including explicit prompts or salient visual stimuli.

Interactions between interoception and perspective-taking: Current state of research and future directions

Interoception, the sense of the physiological state of the body, and perspective-taking, the ability to take another's point of view, are two fundamental components contributing to our perception and interaction with the external world. However, whether the perception of our inner body influences how we perceive the external world and other people remains poorly understood. Here, we review recent behavioural and neuroimaging evidence investigating the links between dimensions of interoception (i.e., accuracy, sensibility and awareness) and perspective-taking (i.e., affective, cognitive and visual). So far, only a limited subset of these dimensions has been investigated together and the results suggest that interoceptive abilities may only interact with perspective-taking when embodied mental transformations are required. Furthermore, mainly the emotional aspects of perspective-taking are related to interoception, influencing the ability to empathise with others. Future research should systematically investigate the links between all dimensions of interoception and perspective-taking to provide full understanding of the specific role interoception has on how we perceive the world and take another's point of view.

Does interference between self and other perspectives in theory of mind tasks reflect a common underlying process? Evidence from individual differences in theory of mind and inhibitory control

Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to understand that other agents have different beliefs, desires, and knowledge than oneself, has been extensively researched. Theory of mind tasks involve participants dealing with interference between their self-perspective and another agent’s perspective, and this interference has been related to executive function, particularly to inhibitory control. This study assessed whether there are individual differences in self–other interference, and whether these effects are due to individual differences in executive function. A total of 142 participants completed two ToM (the director task and a Level 1 visual perspective-taking task), which both involve self–other interference, and a battery of inhibitory control tasks. The relationships between the tasks were examined using path analysis. Results showed that the self–other interference effects of the two ToM tasks were dissociable, with individual differences in performance on the ToM tasks being unrelated and performance in each predicted by different inhibitory control tasks. We suggest that self–other differences are part of the nature of ToM tasks, but self–other interference is not a unitary construct. Instead, self–other differences result in interference effects in various ways and at different stages of processing, and these effects may not be a major limiting step for adults’ performance on typical ToM tasks. Further work is needed to assess other factors that may limit adults’ ToM performance and hence explain individual differences in social ability.

Perspective-taking across cultures: shared biases in Taiwanese and British adults

The influential hypothesis by Markus & Kitayama (Markus, Kitayama 1991. Psychol. Rev. 98, 224) postulates that individuals from interdependent cultures place others above self in interpersonal contexts. This led to the prediction and finding that individuals from interdependent cultures are less egocentric than those from independent cultures (Wu, Barr, Gann, Keysar 2013. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7, 1-7; Wu, Keysar. 2007 Psychol. Sci. 18, 600-606). However, variation in egocentrism can only provide indirect evidence for the Markus and Kitayama hypothesis. The current study sought direct evidence by giving British (independent) and Taiwanese (interdependent) participants two perspective-taking tasks on which an other-focused 'altercentric' processing bias might be observed. One task assessed the calculation of simple perspectives; the other assessed the use of others' perspectives in communication. Sixty-two Taiwanese and British adults were tested in their native languages at their home institutions of study. Results revealed similar degrees of both altercentric and egocentric interference between the two cultural groups. This is the first evidence that listeners account for a speaker's limited perspective at the cost of their own performance. Furthermore, the shared biases point towards similarities rather than differences in perspective-taking across cultures.

Executive function underlies both perspective selection and calculation in Level-1 visual perspective taking

Previous research has suggested that the calculation of another’s perspective is cognitively efficient, whereas perspective selection (selection of a particular perspective, self or other) is associated with executive function, particularly inhibitory control. However, research has not previously tested how perspective calculation and selection may be associated with another key executive function, working memory. In the present study (N = 54 adult participants), we administered a Level-1 visual perspective task in a dual-task paradigm in which the secondary task required working memory. The results suggest that executive function is associated with both perspective calculation and perspective selection, contrary to previous evidence from similar dual-task studies that had used inhibitory control and attention-based secondary tasks. This contrast may suggest that working memory capacity facilitates perspective-taking. Furthermore, it may follow that the notion of simple perspective-taking is distinct from more the complex and cognitively demanding “theory of mind.” Research of this nature warrants further investigation.

An objective neural signature of rapid perspective taking

The frequency-tagging approach has generally been confined to study low-level sensory processes and always found related activation over the occipital region. Here for the first time, we investigated with it, high-level socio-cognitive functions, i.e. the processing of what other people are looking at which is referred to as level 1 visual perspective taking (VPT). Sixteen participants were presented with visual scenes alternating at 2.5 Hz which were depicting a person and an object in a room, while recording electrophysiological brain activity. The person orientation and object position changed at every stimulus but the person in the room always faced the object, except on every fifth stimulus. We found responses in the electroencephalography (EEG) spectrum exactly at the frequency corresponding to the presentation of the scenes where the person could not see the object, i.e. 0.5 Hz. While the 2.5 Hz stimulation rate response focused on typical medial occipital sites, the specific 0.5 Hz response was found mainly over a centro-parietal region. Besides a robust group effect, these responses were significant and quantifiable for most individual participants. Overall, these observations reveal a clear measure of level 1-VPT representation, highlighting the potential of EEG frequency-tagging to capture high-level socio-cognitive functions in the brain.

Modulation of behavioral and brain responses to visual perspective taking by social rejection: Evidence from electrophysiology

Visual perspective taking (VPT) is crucial for reasoning about other people's mental states. To explore the modulation of behavioral and neural responses to visual perspective taking by social rejection, we firstly manipulated rejection using get-acquainted oral communication and a two-person visual perspective task, then explored how the experience of social rejection affected the behavioral and neural responses during the follow-up classical one-person visual perspective task. The subjective rating and behavior results showed that social rejection increased individuals' negative affect level and feelings of need-threat, decreased self-regulation and impulsive control. The event-related potentials (ERP) and standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) results mainly showed that the increased parietal late slow wave (LSW) showed greater activities in SPL and rTPJ after social rejection. Moreover, compared with making judgments from self-perspective, making judgments from other-perspective yielded later TP450 and greater late frontal wave (LFW). In addition, the left LFW of socially rejected group showed more positive amplitude for other-inconsistent condition than that for other-consistent condition. These results suggested that social rejection might decrease impulsive control behaviorally, as well as increase neural processing of perspective taking, including visual-spatial perspective taking (indexed by the LSW), calculating of the self and other perspectives (indexed by the TP450), and processing of others' visual perspectives (indexed by the LFW). Our findings provide powerful evidence on neural mechanism underlying how social rejection modulates visual perspective taking, and support the model of social monitoring system, in that socially rejected individuals motivate to attend more carefully to social cues, such as other people's perspective.

Racial bias in implicit danger associations generalizes to older male targets

Across two experiments, we examined whether implicit stereotypes linking younger (~28-year-old) Black versus White men with violence and criminality extend to older (~68-year-old) Black versus White men. In Experiment 1, participants completed a sequential priming task wherein they categorized objects as guns or tools after seeing briefly-presented facial images of men who varied in age (younger versus older) and race (Black versus White). In Experiment 2, we used different face primes of younger and older Black and White men, and participants categorized words as ‘threatening’ or ‘safe.’ Results consistently revealed robust racial biases in object and word identification: Dangerous objects and words were identified more easily (faster response times, lower error rates), and non-dangerous objects and words were identified less easily, after seeing Black face primes than after seeing White face primes. Process dissociation procedure analyses, which aim to isolate the unique contributions of automatic and controlled processes to task performance, further indicated that these effects were driven entirely by racial biases in automatic processing. In neither experiment did prime age moderate racial bias, suggesting that the implicit danger associations commonly evoked by younger Black versus White men appear to generalize to older Black versus White men.

Perspective taking: motivation and impediment to shared reality

Taking another person's perspective requires acknowledging that there is another viewpoint, which can challenge the concept of shared reality. At the same time, taking someone else's perspective can also preserve shared reality, by helping to explain how aspects of the world may be perceived differently by two different individuals. Thus, establishing or maintaining shared reality may be a primary motivator for perspective taking in everyday life. However, depending on the content (e.g., self-perceptions, assumptions about other people, cherished beliefs) used in constructing another perspective and comparing it with one's own, perspective taking may in some cases instead highlight differences between how people view the world, thus hindering a sense of shared reality.

Implicit Mentalising during Level-1 Visual Perspective-Taking Indicated by Dissociation with Attention Orienting

Experiments demonstrating level-1 visual perspective-taking have been interpreted as providing important evidence for 'implicit mentalising'-the ability to track simple mental states in a fast and efficient manner. However, this interpretation has been contested by a rival 'submentalising' account that proposes that these experiments can be explained by the general purpose mechanisms responsible for attentional orienting. Here, we aim to discriminate between these competing accounts by examining whether a gaze aversion manipulation expected to enhance attention orienting would have similar effects on both perspective-taking and attention orienting tasks. Gaze aversion was operationalised by manipulating head position relative to torso of the avatar figures employed in two experiments (gaze-averted vs. gaze-maintained). Experiment 1 used a Posner cueing task to establish that gaze aversion enhanced attention orienting cued by these avatars. Using the avatar task, Experiment 2 revealed level-1 visual perspective-taking effects of equivalent magnitude for gaze-averted and gaze-maintained conditions. These results indicate that gaze aversion moderated attention orienting but not perspective-taking. This dissociation in performance favours implicit mentalising by casting doubt on the submentalising account. It further constrains theorising by implying that attention orienting is not integral to the system permitting the relatively automatic tracking of mental states.

'Spontaneous' visual perspective-taking mediated by attention orienting that is voluntary and not reflexive

Experiments revealing 'spontaneous' visual perspective-taking are conventionally interpreted as demonstrating that adults have the capacity to track simple mental states in a fast and efficient manner ('implicit mentalising'). A rival account suggests that these experiments can be explained by the general purpose mechanisms responsible for reflexive attentional orienting. Here, we report two experiments designed to distinguish between these competing accounts. In Experiment 1, we assessed whether reflexive attention orienting was sufficient to yield findings interpreted as spontaneous perspective-taking in the 'avatar task' when the protocol was adapted so that participants were unaware that they were taking part in a perspective-taking experiment. Results revealed no evidence for perspective-taking. In Experiment 2, we employed a Posner paradigm to investigate the attentional orienting properties of the avatar stimuli. This revealed cue-validity effects only for longer stimulus onset asynchronies, which indicates a voluntary rather than reflexive shift in spatial attention. Taken together, these findings suggest that attentional orienting does indeed contribute to performance in the Samson et al. avatar task. However, attention orienting appears to be voluntary rather than reflexive, indicating that the perspective-taking phenomenon measured may be less spontaneous than first reported.

A collective perspective: shared attention and the mind

I review the recent literature on shared attention, instances in which one's personal perspective is also another's. As described by Shteynberg [6^••], shared attention involves the activation of a psychological perspective that is personal and plural and irreducibly collective-a perspective in which the world is experienced from 'our attention'. When shared attention is perceived, information under shared attention receives deeper cognitive processing. By updating mutual knowledge, shared attention facilitates communication and, quite possibly, the creation of shared attitudes and beliefs. In this review, I focus on the last 5 years of empirical work detailing the cognitive and affective consequences of shared attention. I also highlight empirical work on the relevance of shared attention to pragmatically important challenges, such as the polarizing effects of social and mass media consumption, as well as the cognitive mechanisms behind autism-like traits. In all, the findings underscore the possibility that shared attention is a basic psychological building block of human sociality-a capacity to act collectively with others who share one's reality.

Intergroup visual perspective-taking: Shared group membership impairs self-perspective inhibition but may facilitate perspective calculation

Reasoning about what other people see, know, and want is essential for navigating social life. Yet, even neurodevelopmentally healthy adults make perspective-taking errors. Here, we examined how the group membership of perspective-taking targets (ingroup vs. outgroup) affects processes underlying visual perspective-taking. In three experiments using two bases of group identity (university affiliation and minimal groups), interference from one's own differing perspective (i.e., egocentric intrusion) was stronger when responding from an ingroup versus an outgroup member's perspective. Spontaneous perspective calculation, as indexed by interference from another's visual perspective when reporting one's own (i.e., altercentric intrusion), did not differ across target group membership in any of our experiments. Process-dissociation analyses, which aim to isolate automatic processes underlying altercentric-intrusion effects, further revealed negligible effects of target group membership on perspective calculation. Meta-analytically, however, there was suggestive evidence that shared group membership facilitates responding from others' perspectives when self and other perspectives are aligned.