Does altercentric interference rely on mentalizing?: Results from two level-1 perspective-taking tasks.

Julia Marshall,Laurie R Santos,Anton Gollwitzer,Sam Gilbert

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0194101

Abstract

Considerable debate has focused on whether adults possess an implicit system for representing others’ mental states. Some argue that people automatically represent the perspective of others using evidence from altercentric interference—cases in which another agent’s perspective affects the speed with which one can report one’s own perspective. Others have argued that altercentric interference is not always specific to social stimuli and thus may represent a simpler process such as submentalizing. To distinguish between these positions, Study 1 developed a novel measure of altercentric interference—a “sandbox” measure—that allowed us to more sensitively assess altercentric interference across social and non-social conditions. We replicated previous findings showing that participants experience both egocentric and altercentric interference, but we found that these effects emerge equally in social and non-social conditions. To further test whether altercentric interference emerges in social perspective-taking situations, Study 2 conducted a conceptual replication of a study which used a novel “goggle” paradigm to assess whether individuals implicitly represent others’ perspectives. Although we failed to find evidence of altercentric interference in response times, participants’ accuracy reflected the possibility of interference from others’ perspectives. We argue that these findings provide support for the idea that altercentric interference in response to social stimuli (an avatar) is driven by perspective-taking mechanisms, while such interference in response to non-social stimuli (an arrow) is driven by attention-cuing mechanisms.

Highlights

Navigating the social world requires complex computations about the often variable contents of other people’s minds
Study 1’s primary aim was to assess whether changing the dependent measure of the typical dot perspective-taking task from response times to a more sensitive, continuous measure of accuracy would reveal stronger altercentric interference effects for social stimuli compared to non-social stimuli
We replicated the effect documented in Samson et al [14] that individuals make both egocentric and altercentric errors in the dot perspective-taking task, we found that participants made these sorts of errors for both non-social stimuli and social stimuli

Summary

Introduction

Navigating the social world requires complex computations about the often variable contents of other people’s minds. Other people’s minds can include anything from simple perspectives, such as what one sees, to complex belief states, such as thinking something is false. Despite widespread agreement that adults—and even infants as young as 15 months of age [1,2]—appear to possess capacities for understanding other people’s perspectives and mental states, much debate exists around the nature of these capabilities.

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