Visual perspective taking and action understanding

Understanding what others are doing is a fundamental aspect of social cognition and a skill that is arguably linked to visuospatial perspective taking (VPT), the ability to apprehend the spatial layout of a scene from another's perspective. Yet, with few and notable exceptions, action understanding and VPT are rarely studied together. Participants (43 females, 37 males) made judgements about the spatial layout of objects in a scene from the perspective of an avatar who was positioned at 0°, 90°, 270° or 180° relative to the participant. In a variant of a traditional VPT task, the avatar either interacted with the objects in the scene, by pointing to or reaching for them, or was present but did not engage with the objects. Although the task was identical across all conditions - to say whether a target object is to the right or left of a control object - we show that the avatar's actions modulates performance. Specifically, participants were more accurate when the avatar engaged with the target object, and correspondingly, less accurate and slower when the avatar interacted with the control objects. As these effects were independent of the angular disparity between participant and avatar perspectives, we conclude that action understanding and VPT are likely linked via the rapid deployment of two separate cognitive mechanisms. All participants provided a measure of self-reported empathy and we show that response times decrease with increasing empathy scores for female but not for male participants. However, within the range of 'typical' empathy scores, defined here as the interquartile range where 50 % of the data lie, females were faster than males. These findings lend further insight into the relationship between spatial and social perspective taking.

Visuospatial perspective-taking of a protagonist during narrative comprehension: the effects of task load and individual differences in visuospatial working memory

Introduction

This study examined whether visuospatial perspective uses the character perspective during narrative comprehension.

Method

Participants read narrative stimuli depicting the spatial positional relationships between characters and objects and judged whether the objects were on the left or right from the character's perspective. We manipulated whether the spatial positional relationships between characters depicted in the narrative stimuli resulted in a visuospatial perspective. We hypothesized that the high-load perspective-taking condition would indicate longer reaction times compared to the low-load perspective-taking condition, as shifting perspectives between characters in the high-load condition require more time for visuospatial perspective-taking.

Results

As predicted, the reaction time was longer for high-load perspective-taking than for low-load perspective-taking.

Discussion

During narrative comprehension, the reaction time for visuospatial perspective-taking must move virtually within the representation from the main character's perspective to that of another character. Visuospatial perspective-taking is involved in narrative comprehension.

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.

Malleability of spatial skills: bridging developmental psychology and toy design for joyful STEAM development

Previous research has established that advances in spatial cognition predict STEAM success, and construction toys provide ample opportunities to foster spatial cognition. Despite various construction toy designs in the market, mostly brick-shaped building blocks are used in spatial cognition research. This group of toys is known to enhance mental rotation; however, mental rotation is not the only way to comprehend the environment three-dimensionally. More specifically, mental folding and perspective taking training have not received enough attention as they can also be enhanced with the construction toys, which are framed based on the 2×2 classification of spatial skills (intrinsic-static, intrinsic-dynamic, extrinsic-static, extrinsic-dynamic). To address these gaps, we compile evidence from both developmental psychology and toy design fields to show the central role played by mental folding and perspective taking skills as well as the importance of the variety in toy designs. The review was conducted systematically by searching peer reviewed design and psychology journals and conference proceedings. We suggest that, over and above their physical properties, construction toys offer affordances to elicit spatial language, gesture, and narrative among child-caregiver dyads. These interactions are essential for the development of spatial skills in both children and their caregivers. As developmental psychology and toy design fields are two domains that can contribute to the purpose of developing construction toys to boost spatial skills, we put forward six recommendations to bridge the current gaps between these fields. Consequently, new toy designs and empirical evidence regarding malleability of different spatial skills can contribute to the informal STEAM development.

Disentangling Different Aspects of Change in Tests with the D-Diffusion Model

Diffusion-based item response theory models are measurement models that link parameters of the diffusion model (drift rate, boundary separation) to latent traits of test takers. Similar to standard latent trait models, they assume the invariance of the test takers' latent traits during a test. Previous research, however, suggests that traits change as test takers learn or decrease their effort. In this paper, we combine the diffusion-based item response theory model with a latent growth curve model. In the model, the latent traits of each test taker are allowed to change during the test until a stable level is reached. As different change processes are assumed for different traits, different aspects of change can be separated. We discuss different versions of the model that make different assumptions about the form (linear versus quadratic) and rate (fixed versus individual-specific) of change. In order to fit the model to data, we propose a Bayes estimator. Parameter recovery is investigated in a simulation study. The study suggests that parameter recovery is good under certain conditions. We illustrate the application of the model to data measuring visuo-spatial perspective-taking.

Individual Differences in Spatial Orientation Modulate Perspective Taking in Listeners

Previous research suggests that individuals exhibit consistent tendencies towards taking their own (an egocentric) or their partner's (an othercentric) spatial perspective. In addition, several factors such as spatial orientation ability, inhibitory control, and social preferences, have been found to mediate these perspective taking tendencies. However, these factors have not been studied together in the context of a single task. The present study explores these individual differences together in spatial perspective taking, using a task of simulated interaction in which listeners can choose to interpret an ambiguous spatial utterance egocentrically or othercentrically. We use a data-driven approach of latent profile analysis to classify participants into subgroups based on their spatial perspective taking tendencies. Our results show that stable subgroups of participants can be identified who differ in their perspective taking tendencies. This behaviour also correlates with a measure of listeners' spatial orientation ability, but not their inhibitory control or social preferences. Our results can be interpreted within a framework that views spatial perspective taking as an embodied cognitive process of a mental reorientation of the self relative to the environment, providing insight on the nature of the mechanisms underlying this operation.

Interoceptive abilities facilitate taking another's spatial perspective

Information can be perceived from a multiplicity of spatial perspectives, which is central to effectively understanding and interacting with our environment and other people. Interoception, the sense of the physiological state of our body, is also a fundamental component contributing to our perception. However, whether the perception of our inner body signals influences our ability to adopt and flexibly change between different spatial perspectives remains poorly understood. To investigate this, 90 participants completed tasks assessing multiple dimensions of interoception (interoceptive sensibility, cardiac interoceptive accuracy and awareness) and the Graphesthesia task to assess tactile spatial perspective-taking and its flexibility. The results revealed that higher cardiac interoceptive awareness is associated with greater consistency in adopting a perspective decentred from the self. Second, higher cardiac interoceptive accuracy was associated with slower and less accurate performance in switching from a decentred to an egocentred perspective. These results show that interoceptive abilities facilitate decentred spatial perspective-taking, likely reflecting stronger perceived boundaries between internal states and the external world.

Visuospatial perspective-taking in social-emotional development: enhancing young children’s mind and emotion understanding via block building training

Background

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to represent one's own and others' mental states, and emotion understanding involves appropriately comprehending and responding to others' emotional cues in social interactions. Individual differences in mind and emotion understanding have been associated strongly with verbal ability and interaction and, as such, existing training for children's ToM and emotion understanding is mostly language-based. Building on the literature on embodied cognition, this study proposes that mind and emotion understanding could be facilitated by one's visuospatial experience in simulating other's frames of reference.

Methods

This protocol consists of two training studies. Study 1 will examine if visuospatial perspective-taking training promotes ToM and emotion understanding. Participants will consist of 96 4.5-year-olds and will be randomly assigned to one of two training groups: the altercentric block building group (trained to be visuospatial perspective-takers), or the egocentric block building group (no visuospatial perspective-taking is involved). Study 2 will compare the engagement of visuospatial perspective-taking and verbal interaction in the development of mind and emotion understanding. Participants will consist of 120 4.5-year-olds. They will be randomly assigned to one of three training groups: the socialized altercentric block building (both visuospatial perspective-taking and verbal interaction), the parallel altercentric block building (visuospatial perspective-taking only), or the paired dialogic reading (verbal interaction only).

Conclusions

In terms of theoretical implications, the potential causal relationship between visuospatial perspective-taking and ToM and emotion understanding may shed new insights on what underlies the development of mental state understanding. The findings of this study also have practical implications: researchers and educators may popularize visuospatial perspective-taking training in the form of block-building games if it is found to be effective in complementing conventional language-based theory-of-mind training.

Perspective-taking and belief in a just world matter: Adolescents’ role experiences in bullying processes

Bullying is a serious problem around the world, especially among adolescents. Evidence exists that low levels of social perspective-taking as well as belief in a just world played an important role in bullying. Both dispositions function as psychological resources that may help students behave appropriately in social life. Previous research identified distinct bullying roles such as perpetrator, victim, assistant, reinforcer, defender, and bystander experiences. Although this participant-role approach has been extensively investigated in the last years, a simultaneous examination of students’ perspective-taking and belief in a just world in relation to their experiences in these roles is still missing. This study’s objective was to examine a differential approach of school students’ visuospatial and dispositional social perspective-taking, emotional concern, and personal belief in a just world in relation to their experiences in bullying roles. We tested these relations in a sample of n = 1309 adolescents (50.6% female, Mage = 13.73, SDage = 0.85) from 38 schools in Germany. The results from a latent structural-equation model suggested that experiences as a perpetrator, assistant, reinforcer but also as defender related to low visuospatial social perspective-taking. Emotional concern was positively related to defender experiences. Personal belief in a just world was negatively associated with experiences as a perpetrator and a victim. The results underline the importance of disentangling concurrent contributions of perspective-taking and belief in a just world related to the bullying roles. We conclude that adolescents’ visuospatial social perspective taking seems to be a further mental resource against antisocial behavior in bullying.

Visuospatial and Affective Perspective-Taking

Abstract. Perspective-taking is the ability to intuit another person’s mental state. Historically, cognitive and affective perspective-taking are distinguished from visuospatial perspective-taking because the content these processes operate on is too dissimilar. However, all three share functional similarities. Following recent research showing relations between cognitive and visuospatial perspective-taking, this article explores links between visuospatial and affective perspective-taking. Data of three preregistered experiments suggest that visuospatial perspective-taking does not improve emotion recognition speed and only slightly increases emotion recognition accuracy (Experiment 1), yet visuospatial perspective-taking increases the perceived intensity of emotional expressions (Experiment 2), as well as the emotional contagiousness of negative emotions (Experiment 3). The implications of these findings for content-based, cognitive, and functional taxonomies of perspective-taking and related processes are discussed.

EXPRESS: Sex Differences in Social and Spatial Perspective Taking: A Replication and Extension of Tarampi et al. (2016)

Tarampi and colleagues (2016) found that females performed better on spatial perspective-taking tasks when social information was present. They interpreted this finding to suggest that adding social information would uniquely improve the performance of females due to their better social perspective taking. In this replication and extension study, we tested an alternative explanation for their results: the tasks with social information also provided spatial information which could explain improved performance. In a study with 278 college students, we used the two versions of the tasks from their study (no social or spatial information and with social and spatial information) and added two versions that isolate only social and only spatial information. Our replication of Tarampi et al.'s analyses found no difference in females' performance on the tasks, however, when both females and males were included, we found some evidence for better performance in the social and spatial condition. Examining both males' and females' performance in all four conditions, we found that males outperformed females. In addition, participants who completed tasks with spatial information performed better. Findings suggest the difference observed in Tarampi et al. may have been due to the inclusion of spatial information, not social information, that improves task performance for both females and males. These results suggest that spatial perspective-taking performance is better when given even subtle spatial cues, but that social information does not appear to improve performance, despite ties with social perspective taking.

Action Intentions, Predictive Processing, and Mind Reading: Turning Goalkeepers Into Penalty Killers

The key to action control is one’s ability to adequately predict the consequences of one’s actions. Predictive processing theories assume that forward models enable rapid “preplay” to assess the match between predicted and intended action effects. Here we propose the novel hypothesis that “reading” another’s action intentions requires a rich forward model of that agent’s action. Such a forward model can be obtained and enriched through learning by either practice or simulation. Based on this notion, we ran a series of studies on soccer goalkeepers and novices, who predicted the intended direction of penalties being kicked at them in a computerized penalty-reading task. In line with hypotheses, extensive practice in penalty kicking improved performance in penalty reading among goalkeepers who had extensive prior experience in penalty blocking but not in penalty kicking. A robust benefit in penalty reading did not result from practice in kinesthetic motor imagery of penalty kicking in novice participants. To test whether goalkeepers actually use such penalty-kicking imagery in penalty reading, we trained a machine-learning classifier on multivariate fMRI activity patterns to distinguish motor-imagery-related from attention-related strategies during a penalty-imagery training task. We then applied that classifier to fMRI data related to a separate penalty-reading task and showed that 2/3 of all correctly read penalty kicks were classified as engaging the motor-imagery circuit rather than merely the attention circuit. This study provides initial evidence that, in order to read our opponent’s action intention, it helps to observe their action kinematics, and use our own forward model to predict the sensory consequences of “our” penalty kick if we were to produce these action kinematics ourselves. In sum, it takes practice as a penalty kicker to become a penalty killer.

EXPRESS: Is Implicit Level-2 Visual perspective taking embodied? Spontaneous perceptual simulation of others' perspectives is not impaired by motor restriction

Visual perspective taking may rely on the ability to mentally rotate one's own body into that of another. Here we test whether participants' ability to make active body movements plays a causal role in visual perspective taking. We utilized our recent task that measures whether participants spontaneously represent another's visual perspective in a (quasi-)perceptual format that can drive own perceptual decision making. Participants reported whether alphanumeric characters, presented in different orientations, are shown in their normal or mirror-inverted form (e.g., "R" vs. "Я"). Between trials, we manipulated whether another person was sitting either left or right of the character and whether participants' movement was restricted with a chin rest or they could move freely. As in our previous research, participants spontaneously took the visual perspective of the other person, recognizing rotated letters more rapidly when they appeared upright to the other person in the scene, compared to when they faced away from that person, and these effects increased with age but were (weakly) negatively related to Schizotypy and not to autistic traits or social skills. Restricting participants' ability to make active body movements did not influence these effects. The results therefore rule out that active physical movement plays a causal role in computing another's visual perspective, either to create alignment between own and other's perspective or to trigger perspective-taking processes. The postural adjustments people sometimes make when making judgements from another's perspective may instead be a bodily consequence of mentally transforming one's actual to an imagined position in space.

Try to see it my way - Examining the relationship between visual perspective taking and theory of mind in frontotemporal dementia

The behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is characterised by pronounced alterations in social functioning, including the understanding of others' thoughts and feelings via theory of mind. The emergence of such impairments in other social disorders such as autism and schizophrenia is suggested to reflect an inability to imagine the other person's visual perspective of the world. To our knowledge, relationships between visual perspective taking and theory of mind have not previously been explored in bvFTD. Here, we sought to examine the capacity for visual perspective taking and theory of mind in bvFTD, and to establish their inter-relationships and underlying neural correlates. Fifteen bvFTD patients and 15 healthy Controls completed a comprehensive battery of perspective taking measures, comprising Level 1 ('what') and Level 2 ('how') visual perspective taking tasks, a cartoon task capturing theory of mind, and a questionnaire assessing subjective perspective taking in daily life. Compared with Controls, bvFTD patients displayed significant impairments across all perspective taking measures. These perspective taking impairments, however, were not correlated with one another in bvFTD. Region-of-interest voxel-based morphometry analyses suggested distinct neural correlates for visual perspective taking (inferior frontal gyrus) versus theory of mind (medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus), which appeared to partially overlap with those implicated in subjective perspective taking (inferior frontal gyrus, precuneus, temporoparietal junction). Despite pervasive impairments in all aspects of perspective taking in bvFTD, these did not appear to relate to one another at the behavioural or neural level in our study. Future large-scale studies manipulating discrete aspects of the tasks will help to clarify the neurocognitive mechanisms of, and relationships between, visual perspective taking and theory of mind in bvFTD, along with their real-world implications.

The effects of body direction and posture on taking the perspective of a humanoid avatar in a virtual environment

Visual perspective taking is inferring how the world looks to another person. To clarify this process, we investigated whether employing a humanoid avatar as the viewpoint would facilitate an imagined perspective shift in a virtual environment, and which factor of the avatar is effective for the facilitation effect. We used a task that involved reporting how an object looks by a simple direction judgment, either from the avatar’s position or from the position of an empty chair. We found that the humanoid avatar’s presence improved task performance. Furthermore, the avatar’s facilitation effect was observed only when the avatar was facing the visual stimulus to be judged; performance was worse when it faced backwards than when there was only an empty chair facing forwards. This suggests that the avatar does not simply attract spatial attention, but the posture of the avatar is crucial for the facilitation effect. In addition, when the directions of the head and the torso were opposite (i.e., an impossible posture), the avatar’s facilitation effect disappeared. Thus, visual perspective taking might not be facilitated by the avatar when its posture is biomechanically impossible because we cannot embody it. Finally, even when the avatar’s head of the possible posture was covered with a bucket, the facilitation effect was found with the forward-facing avatar rather than the backward-facing avatar. That is, the head/gaze direction cue, or presumably the belief that the visual stimulus to be judged can be seen by the avatar, was not required. These results suggest that explicit perspective taking is facilitated by embodiment towards humanoid avatars.

Feeling for the Other With Ease: Prospective Actors Show High Levels of Emotion Recognition and Report Above Average Empathic Concern, but Do Not Experience Strong Distress

Differences in empathic abilities between acting, dance, and psychology students were explored, in addition to the appropriateness of existing empathy measures in the context of these cohorts. Students (N = 176) across Higher Education Institutions in the United Kingdom and Europe were included in the online survey analysis, consisting of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) test, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Empathy Quotient (EQ), and the E-drawing test (EDT), each measuring particular facets of empathy. Based on existing evidence and our understanding of the discipline practices, we predicted that acting students would perform the best at identifying people’s emotional expressions but might lack other cognitive or affective empathy skills, particularly those related to emotional reactions. This cohort thus provides an opportunity to evaluate different empathy measures. While actors showed significantly higher RME scores than dancers, the difference between actors and psychologists was marginal. Moreover, actors’ scores did not differ significantly on other empathy measures, such as their concern for others’ emotional wellbeing or fantasy, both measured by IRI subscales. Psychology students scored highest in the IRI perspective taking subscale and the data supported anecdotal evidence that psychologists were more concerned for others’ emotional wellbeing than dancers or actors. Dancers seemed the least concerned with others’ perspectives and emotional states, which we explained through a somatosensory ‘inward’ focus required by their art form. Nevertheless, compared to the general population, our groups reported higher empathic abilities on all IRI subscales except for personal distress. Altogether, our study shows that the RME, the IRI, and the EDT vary in their susceptibility to different facets of empathic abilities in acting, dance, and psychology students whereas the EQ does not. Emotions can be expressed and perceived through language, facial expressions, or behavior. As many empathy tests focus on one type of signal they might miss other strategies. Where empathy tests are applied to individuals that have a predominance to read or respond to others in a particular way, as we showed through these three disciplines, they might not capture these empathic strategies. We thus propose that empathy tests must evolve by means of integrating varied forms of communication.

Sympathy for the underdog: people are inclined to adopt the emotional perspective of powerless (versus powerful) others

Upon learning of the story of Cinderella, most people spontaneously adopt the emotional perspective of this helpless young woman rather than of her older sisters who oppress her. The present research examines whether this pattern reveals a general human tendency to empathise more with the emotions of individuals with low (versus high) power. Six experiments (N = 878) examined how power influences the focus of people's emotional attributions. Participants were presented with situations in which one character exercised power over another one and had to resolve a referential ambiguity by considering the perspective of one or the other character. Results show that participants largely privileged the emotional states of the low-power character over those of the high-power character. This effect was observed with different types of stimuli (comics and video clips), with high- and low-power roles attributed to pairs of different genders (Experiments 1-4) or same gender (Experiments 5-6). Finally, the tendency persisted - though it was reduced - when participants adopted a less passive role with respect to the characters (Experiment 3) and when power occurred in a less despotic way (Experiment 6). Results are discussed with respect to social attention and sensitivity to fairness.

Spatial Ability and Theory of Mind: A Mediating Role of Visual Perspective Taking

This research tests the role of visual perspective taking (VPT) in mediating the relation between spatial ability and theory of mind (ToM). Study 1 demonstrated such mediation correlationally in seventy 3.5- to 4-year olds. In Study 2, twenty-three 3.5- to 4-year-olds were trained on using play blocks to copy preassembled models as a way to promote spatial ability. Resultant increases in VPT and ToM were compared to those from a control group learning to draw instead (n = 23). Both studies showed that the effect of spatial ability on ToM depended on VPT, suggesting a role of embodiment in ToM development in early childhood. These findings provide an alternative way to think about ToM development and the psychological mechanism that may be involved.

Test-Taking Motivation in Education Students: Task Battery Order Affected Within-Test-Taker Effort and Importance

Different types of tasks exist, including tasks for research purposes or exams assessing knowledge. According to expectation-value theory, tests are related to different levels of effort and importance within a test taker. Test-taking effort and importance in students decreased over the course of high-stakes tests or low-stakes-tests in research on test-taking motivation. However, whether test-order changes affect effort, importance, and response processes of education students have seldomly been experimentally examined. We aimed to examine changes in effort and importance resulting from variations in test battery order and their relations to response processes. We employed an experimental design assessing N = 320 education students' test-taking effort and importance three times as well as their performance on cognitive ability tasks and a mock exam. Further relevant covariates were assessed once such as expectancies, test anxiety, and concentration. We randomly varied the order of the cognitive ability test and mock exam. The assumption of intraindividual changes in education students' effort and importance over the course of test taking was tested by one latent growth curve that separated data for each condition. In contrast to previous studies, responses and test response times were included in diffusion models for examining education students' response processes within the test-taking context. The results indicated intraindividual changes in education students' effort or importance depending on test order but similar mock-exam response processes. In particular effort did not decrease, when the cognitive ability test came first and the mock exam subsequently but significantly decreased, when the mock exam came first and the cognitive ability test subsequently. Diffusion modeling suggested differences in response processes (separation boundaries and estimated latent trait) on cognitive ability tasks suggesting higher motivational levels when the cognitive ability test came first than vice versa. The response processes on the mock exam tasks did not relate to condition.

Perspective taking as virtual navigation? Perceptual simulation of what others see reflects their location in space but not their gaze

Other peoples' (imagined) visual perspectives are represented perceptually in a similar way to our own, and can drive bottom-up processes in the same way as own perceptual input (Ward, Ganis, & Bach, 2019). Here we test directly whether visual perspective taking is driven by where another person is looking, or whether these perceptual simulations represent their position in space more generally. Across two experiments, we asked participants to identify whether alphanumeric characters, presented at one of eight possible orientations away from upright, were presented normally, or in their mirror-inverted form (e.g. "R" vs. "Я"). In some scenes, a person would appear sitting to the left or the right of the participant. We manipulated either between-trials (Experiment 1) or between-subjects (Experiment 2), the gaze-direction of the inserted person, such that they either (1) looked towards the to-be-judged item, (2) averted their gaze away from the participant, or (3) gazed out towards the participant (Exp. 2 only). In the absence of another person, we replicated the well-established mental rotation effect, where recognition of items becomes slower the more items are oriented away from upright (e.g. Shepard and Meltzer, 1971). Crucially, in both experiments and in all conditions, this response pattern changed when another person was inserted into the scene. People spontaneously took the perspective of the other person and made faster judgements about the presented items in their presence if the characters were oriented towards upright to them. The gaze direction of this other person did not influence these effects. We propose that visual perspective taking is therefore a general spatial-navigational ability, allowing us to calculate more easily how a scene would (in principle) look from another position in space, and that such calculations reflect the spatial location of another person, but not their gaze.

What Do Theory-of-Mind Tasks Actually Measure? Theory and Practice

In recent decades, the ability to represent others' mental states (i.e., theory of mind) has gained particular attention in various disciplines ranging from ethology to cognitive neuroscience. Despite the exponentially growing interest, the functional architecture of social cognition is still unclear. In the present review, we argue that not only the vocabulary but also most of the classic measures for theory of mind lack specificity. We examined classic tests used to assess theory of mind and noted that the majority of them do not require the participant to represent another's mental state or, sometimes, any mental state at all. Our review reveals that numerous classic tests measure lower-level processes that do not directly test for theory of mind. We propose that more attention should be paid to methods used in this field of social cognition to improve the understanding of underlying concepts.

Level-2 visuo-spatial perspective-taking and interoception - More evidence for the embodiment of perspective-taking

Level-2 visuo-spatial perspective-taking is an embodied process during which the perspective-taker mentally simulates a movement of his or her body into the location of the target. Evidence for the embodiment of this process so far exclusively stems from congruency effects in visuo-spatial perspective-taking experiments. Here, additional triangulation for the embodiment of this process is provided from an interindividual differences perspective. In a cross-sectional observational study, participants completed a behavioral level-2 visuo-spatial perspective-taking task and the heartbeat tracking task, which measures interoceptive accuracy and sensibility. Interoceptive accuracy is the objective ability to accurately perceive signals from within the body. In the present study, interoceptive accuracy was quantified by comparing the number of actual heartbeats observed via electrocardiographic recording to subjectively perceived heartbeats during that time. This measure was related to faster perspective-taking and better overall perspective-taking performance. Interoceptive sensibility refers to subjective beliefs about interoceptive abilities. Here, confidence in the estimated number of heartbeats served as a measure if interoceptive sensibility. Finally, the correspondence between interoceptive accuracy and sensibility is referred to as interoceptive awareness. Interoceptive sensibility and awareness were unrelated to perspective-taking. The study is a demonstration of the role interindividual differences in different facets of interoception play for embodied cognition. Implications for future research on links between embodied cognition and interoception are outlined and critically discussed.

Object's symmetry alters spatial perspective-taking processes

Spatial perspective-taking (SPT) refers to one's ability to identify or understand the location of a target relative to another viewpoint, which could be specified by a human-like agent or a reference object (e.g., a chair). Previous studies have shown that SPT is characterized by different processes depending on whether one is required to make a left/right or front/behind judgment. An object's shape, however, may also account for the different processes, as previous studies typically used reference objects that were left-right symmetrical and front-back asymmetrical (e.g., human figures, dolls, or chairs), thus confounding effects of judgment direction and effects of objects' shape. To address this issue, we manipulated objects' shape (symmetrical or asymmetrical about front-back or left-right) independently of judgment direction (i.e., left/right or front/behind) and compared participants' efficacy of such judgments. Our results showed that egocentric transformations were used more frequently for judgments orthogonal to the object's symmetry plane than for judgments orthogonal to the object's asymmetry plane, whereas the inverse was true for mental scanning. Notably, these tendencies were observed regardless of whether the judgment was about left/right or front/behind. Nonetheless, egocentric transformations were found to be more difficult to apply to the front/behind judgments than to the left/right judgments. We also found that this difficulty was alleviated by rich imagination. Furthermore, we found that participants tended to erroneously perceive a front-back symmetrical human-like object as facing them, even when it was actually facing away from them (facing bias). This in turn forced the participants to conduct unnecessary egocentric transformations. Overall, our findings demonstrated that objects' symmetry dramatically influenced SPT processes.

Spontaneous Vicarious Perception of the Content of Another's Visual Perspective

Visual perspective taking (VPT) is a core process of social cognition, providing humans with insights into what the environment looks like from another's point of view [1-4]. While VPT is often described as a quasi-perceptual phenomenon [5, 6], evidence for this proposal has been lacking. Here, we provide direct evidence that another's perspective can "stand in" for one's own sensory input during perceptual decision making. In a variant of the classic mental rotation task, participants judged whether characters presented in different orientations were canonical or mirror inverted. In the absence of another person, we replicate the well-established positive linear relationship between recognition times and angle of orientation such that recognition becomes slower the more an item has to be mentally rotated into its canonical orientation [7]. Importantly, this relationship was disrupted simply by placing another individual in the scene. Items rotated away from the participant were recognized more rapidly the closer they appeared in their canonical orientation, not only to the participant, but also to this other individual, showing that another's visual perspective drives mental rotation and item recognition in a similar way as one's own visual perspective. The effects were large and replicated in the three independent studies. They were observed even when the other person was completely passive, enhanced when the participant was explicitly instructed to take the other person's perspective, but reduced when the persons in the scenes were replaced with objects. The content of another's perspective is therefore spontaneously derived, takes a quasi-perceptual form, and can stand in for one's own sensory input during perceptual decision making.

Egocentrism in sub-clinical depression

Depression is marked by rigid thinking and the inability to generate different and more positive views on the self. The current study conceptualises this a perspective-taking deficit, which is defined as a deficit in the ability to overcome one's egocentrism. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with depression are impaired in Theory of Mind reasoning and empathy - two social cognitions that involve cognitive and affective perspective-taking. Here, it was investigated whether these deficits generalise to visuo-spatial perspective-taking. To test this, a convenience sample (N = 268; n = 62 high depressive symptoms; n = 206 healthy control participants) completed a test-battery including measures of cognitive and visuo-spatial perspective-taking and closely matched cognitive and visuo-spatial control tasks. The results showed that individuals exhibiting high levels of depressive symptoms were specifically impaired on both perspective-taking tasks but performed equally well on the control tasks. Interventions to combat rigid thinking in depression are discussed.

On my right or on your left? Spontaneous spatial perspective taking in blind people

Spatial perspective taking is a human ability that permits to assume another person's spatial viewpoint. Data show that spatial perspective taking might arise even spontaneously by the mere presence of another person in the environment. We investigated whether this phenomenon is observable also in blind people. Blind and blindfolded sighted participants explored a tridimensional tactile map and memorized the localization of different landmarks. Then, after the presentation of sounds coming from three landmarks-positioned on the right, on the left, and in front-participants had to indicate the reciprocal position of the two lateral landmarks. Results showed that when the sound coming from the frontal landmark suggested the presence of a speaking (voice) or moving person (footsteps), several blind and sighted people adopted this person's perspective. These findings suggest that auditory stimuli can trigger spontaneous spatial perspective taking in sighted as well as in blind people.

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.

Mental Rotation in False Belief Understanding

This study examines the spontaneous use of embodied egocentric transformation (EET) in understanding false beliefs in the minds of others. EET involves the participants mentally transforming or rotating themselves into the orientation of an agent when trying to adopt his or her visuospatial perspective. We argue that psychological perspective taking such as false belief reasoning may also involve EET because of what has been widely reported in the embodied cognition literature, showing that our processing of abstract, propositional information is often grounded in concrete bodily sensations which are not apparently linked to higher cognition. In Experiment 1, an agent placed a ball into one of two boxes and left. The ball then rolled out and moved either into the other box (new box) or back into the original one (old box). The participants were to decide from which box they themselves or the agent would try to recover the ball. Results showed that false belief performance was affected by increased orientation disparity between the participants and the agent, suggesting involvement of embodied transformation. In Experiment 2, false belief was similarly induced and the participants were to decide if the agent would try to recover the ball in one specific box. Orientation disparity was again found to affect false belief performance. The present results extend previous findings on EET in visuospatial perspective taking and suggest that false belief reasoning, which is a kind of psychological perspective taking, can also involve embodied rotation, consistent with the embodied cognition view.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the inferior frontal cortex affects the "social scaling" of extrapersonal space depending on perspective-taking ability

When we have to judge the distance between another person and an object (social condition), we judge this distance as being smaller compared to judging the distance between two objects (nonsocial condition). It has been suggested that this compression is mediated by the attribution of a motor potential to the reference frame (other person vs. object). In order to explore the neural basis of this effect, we investigated whether the modulation of activity in the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) of the left hemisphere (recruited during visuospatial processes with a social component) changes the way we categorize space in a social compared with a nonsocial condition. We applied transcranial direct current stimulation to the left IFC, with different polarities (anodal, cathodal, and sham) while subjects performed an extrapersonal space categorization task. Interestingly, anodal stimulation of IFC induced an higher compression of space in the social compared to nonsocial condition. By contrast, cathodal stimulation induced the opposite effect. Furthermore, we found that this effect is modulated by interindividual differences in cognitive perspective taking. Our data support the idea that IFC is recruited during the social categorization of space.

Sequential Approach-Avoidance Movements

Abstract. The affective consequences of sequential approach-avoidance movements in the mouth were investigated. Participants (total N = 872) received words for which consonantal stricture spots either wandered first-inward-then-outward (e.g., FOLOKOLOF; approach-avoidance) or first-outward-then-inward (e.g., KOLOFOLOK; avoidance-approach) in the mouth. In a pilot study, it was established that first-inward-then-outward (first-outward-then-inward) is associated with negative disgust (positive ingestion) reactions (Experiment 1). Approach-avoidance sequences were preferred less than avoidance-approach sequences (Experiments 2a–3b); and this effect disappeared under oral motor-interference (Experiment 4). Experiment 5 provides evidence that a mere recency effect is an unlikely explanation for these effects. Thus, sequentially executed oral approach and avoidance movements do not cancel each other out but jointly influence resulting affective responses.

Can I cut the Gordian tnok? The impact of pronounceability, actual solvability, and length on intuitive problem assessments of anagrams

When assessing a problem, many cues can be used to predict solvability and solving effort. Some of these cues, however, can be misleading. The present approach shows that a feature of a problem that is actually related to solving difficulty is used as a cue for solving ease when assessing the problem in the first place. For anagrams, it is an established effect that easy-to-pronounce anagrams (e.g., NOGAL) take more time to being solved than hard-to-pronounce anagrams (e.g., HNWEI). However, when assessing an anagram in the first place, individuals use the feature of pronounceability to predict solving ease, because pronounceability is an instantiation of the general mechanism of processing fluency. Participants (total N=536) received short and long anagrams and nonanagrams and judged solvability and solving ease intuitively without actually solving the items. Easy-to-pronounce letter strings were more frequently judged as being solvable than hard-to-pronounce letters strings (Experiment 1), and were estimated to require less effort (Experiments 2, 4-7) and time to be solved (Experiment 3). This effect was robust for short and long items, anagrams and nonanagrams, and presentation timings from 4 down to 0.5s, and affected novices and experts alike. Spontaneous solutions did not mediate this effect. Participants were sensitive to actual solvability even for long anagrams (6-11 letters long) presented only for 500 ms.