Effects of arm crossing on spatial perspective-taking.

Tiziano Furlanetto,Cristina Becchio,Caterina Ansuini,Alberto Gallace

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0095748

Tiziano Furlanetto, Cristina Becchio + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0095748

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Abstract

Human social interactions often require people to take a different perspective than their own. Although much research has been done on egocentric spatial representation in a solo context, little is known about how space is mapped in relation to other bodies. Here we used a spatial perspective-taking paradigm to investigate whether observing a person holding his arms crossed over the body midline has an impact on the encoding of left/right and front/back spatial relations from that person’s perspective. In three experiments, we compared performance in a task in which spatial judgments were made from the perspective of the participant or from that of a co-experimenter. Depending on the experimental condition, the participant’s and the co-experimenter’s arms were either crossed or not crossed over the midline. Our results showed that crossing the arms had a specific effect on spatial judgments based on a first-person perspective. More specifically, the responses corresponding to the dominant hand side were slower in the crossed than in the uncrossed arms condition. Crucially, a similar effect was also found when the participants adopted the perspective of a person holding his arms crossed, but not when the other person’s arms were held in an unusual but uncrossed posture. Taken together these findings indicate that egocentric space and altercentric space are similarly coded in neurocognitive maps structured with respect to specific body segments.

Highlights

Results from neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and psychophysics converge in showing that the egocentric representation of the space surrounding the body is structured with respect to specific body parts, such as the hands or the face, and can plastically change depending on bodily action possibilities [1,2,3]
It is already well known that the active use of a tool extending reachable space can cause the remapping of far space as near space [4] and that peripersonal space can be shifted to include the position of artificial body parts (e.g., [5,6])
In order to address this issue, in the present study we systematically manipulated arm position in a task in which spatial judgments were made from the perspective of the participant or from that of a co-experimenter

Summary

Introduction

Results from neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and psychophysics converge in showing that the egocentric representation of the space surrounding the body is structured with respect to specific body parts, such as the hands or the face, and can plastically change depending on bodily action possibilities [1,2,3]. People are inherently social beings and often find themselves in situations that require them to overcome their own position in space to adopt another person’s spatial perspective When asking another person where an object is located, for example, people typically favor the other person’s spatial perspective over their own and tend to answer from that person’s viewpoint (e.g., ‘‘on your left’’; [10]). They may adopt the spatial perspective of another person who is in the position to act on objects [11], even more so when the person’s behavioral intention is ambiguous and the need for action understanding is increased [12]

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