Perspective-taking Ability Research Articles

Using Vision Boards to Support the Development of Early Student Counselors

ABSTRACT One of the primary functions of clinical supervision is to facilitate counseling skills development. The integrative developmental model (IDM) suggests specific challenges facing masters-level student counselors at each developmental level. For early student counselors, this includes heightened anxiety, perfectionism, and struggles with self-concept and wellness. We propose using vision boards as a supervision tool to address these developmental challenges through creative arts-based interventions. The process of engaging in creative arts-based supervision decreases supervisees’ anxiety and increases self-awareness, perspective-taking abilities, and cognitive complexity, making personal growth more accessible. Vision boards visually represent student counselor growth and development and function as a means to document student counselor progress for evaluation and gatekeeping purposes. A case study is presented to explore the application of the vision board within the framework of the IDM. Finally, implications and limitations are discussed.

Quantitatively Measuring Developmental Characteristics in the Use of Deictic Verbs for Japanese-Speaking Children: A Pilot Study

The acquisition of deictic verbs is a significant milestone in language development. This complex process requires an understanding of the interplay between the personal pronouns “I/you” and deictic verbs. Although demonstrating the cognitive processes associated with deictic shifting through data is valuable, research issues regarding data accuracy and the spatial arrangement of the self and other remain unresolved. This pilot study aimed to quantitatively measure the body movements of Japanese-speaking children during their utterances of “come/go”. Twelve typically developing children aged 6–7 participated in this study. Multiple scenarios were set up where the researcher presented phrases using “come/go” with deictic gestures, such as moving one’s upper body forward or backward, and the participant replied with “come/go”. When performing a role, the researcher sat face-to-face or side-by-side with the participant, depending on the type of question–response. It is possible that there is a learning process whereby verbal responses using “come/go” align with corresponding body movements in the specific question type. This process is deeply involved in the development of perspective-taking abilities. Future research with relatively large samples and cross-cultural comparisons is warranted to deepen the understanding of this linguistic acquisition process and its implications.

Variation in gaze following across the life span: A process-level perspective.

Following eye gaze is fundamental for many social-cognitive abilities, for example, when judging what another agent can or cannot know. While the emergence of gaze following has been thoroughly studied on a group level, we know little about (a) the developmental trajectory beyond infancy and (b) the sources of individual differences. In Study 1, we examined gaze following across the lifespan (N=478 3- to 19-year-olds from Leipzig, Germany; and N=240 20- to 80-year-old international, remotely tested adults). We found a steep performance improvement during preschool years, in which children became more precise in locating the attentional focus of an agent. Precision levels then stayed comparably stable throughout adulthood with a minor decline toward old age. In Study 2, we formalized the process of gaze following in a computational cognitive model that allowed us to conceptualize individual differences in a psychologically meaningful way (N=60 3- to 5-year-olds, 50 adults). According to our model, participants estimate pupil angles with varying levels of precision based on observing the pupil location within the agent's eyes. In Study 3, we empirically tested how gaze following relates to vector following in non-social settings and perspective-taking abilities (N=102 4- to 5-year-olds). We found that gaze following is associated with both of these abilities but less so with other Theory of Mind tasks. This work illustrates how the combination of reliable measurement instruments and formal theoretical models allows us to explore the in(ter)dependence of core social-cognitive processes in greater detail. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Gaze following develops beyond infancy. The highest precision levels in localizing attentional foci are reached in young adulthood with a slight decrease towards old age. We present a computational model that describes gaze following as a process of estimating pupil angles and the corresponding gaze vectors. The model explains individual differences and recovers signature patterns in the data. To estimate the relation between gaze- and vector following, we designed a non-social vector following task. We found substantial correlations between gaze following and vector following, as well as Level 2 perspective-taking. Other Theory of Mind tasks did not correlate.

에듀테크 활동이 유아의 조망수용능력과 놀이성에 미치는 효과

에듀테크 활동이 유아의 조망수용능력과 놀이성에 미치는 효과

Father-Love Absence and Moral Sensitivity: The Mediating Effect of Awe and Perspective-Taking

ABSTRACT Paternal love plays a crucial role in a child’s moral sensitivity. Previous studies in psychology focused on exploring the relationship between mother figures and their children’s moral development, while there needed to be more research on paternal love. Moreover, the potential path by which father-love absence affects an individual’s moral sensitivity is still unclear. Thus, based on social learning theory, we explored the mediating roles of awe and perspective-taking in the relationship between the lack of fatherly love and individuals’ moral sensitivity. 1,795 adolescents living in mainland China were recruited to participate in the study. They were asked to complete four different assessment scales, including the Father-Love Absence Scale (FLAS), the Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C Scale (IRI-C), the Dispositional Positive Emotion Scale (DPES), and the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire (MSQ). The results showed that, firstly, father-love absence directly negatively affected children’s moral sensitivity. Secondly, awe emotion mediated the effect of father-love absence on children’s moral sensitivity. Thirdly, perspective-taking ability mediated the effect of father-love absence on children’s moral sensitivity. This study provided theoretical support to explore factors in enhancing individuals’ moral sensitivity, such as inhibiting father-love absence by experiencing awe emotion and promoting the ability of perspective-taking.

The role of self-referential and social processing in the relationship between pubertal status and difficulties in mental health and emotion regulation in adolescent girls in the UK.

Adolescence is marked by the onset of puberty, which is associated with an increase in mental health difficulties, particularly in girls. Social and self-referential processes also develop during this period: adolescents become more aware of others' perspectives, and judgements about themselves become less favourable. In the current study, data from 119 girls (from London, UK) aged 9-16 years were collected at two-time points (between 2019 and 2021) to investigate the relationship between puberty and difficulties in mental health and emotion regulation, as well as the role of self-referential and social processing in this relationship. Structural equation modelling showed that advanced pubertal status predicted greater mental health and emotion regulation difficulties, including depression and anxiety, rumination and overall difficulties in emotion regulation, and in mental health and behaviour. Advanced pubertal status also predicted greater perspective-taking abilities and negative self-schemas. Exploratory analyses showed that negative self-schemas mediated the relationships between puberty and rumination, overall emotion regulation difficulties, and depression (although these effects were small and would not survive correction for multiple comparisons). The results suggest that advanced pubertal status is associated with higher mental health and emotion regulation problems during adolescence and that negative self-schemas may play a role in this association. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: This study investigates the relationship between puberty, mental health, emotion regulation difficulties, and social and self-referential processing in girls aged 9-16 years. Advanced pubertal status was associated with worse mental health and greater emotion regulation difficulties, better perspective-taking abilities and negative self-schemas. Negative self-schemas may play a role in the relationships between advanced pubertal status and depression, and advanced pubertal status and emotion regulation difficulties, including rumination.

Perspective-Taking or Feeling? The Role of Cognitive and Affective Empathy for Adolescents’ Social Entrepreneurial Intentions

Given the world’s current challenges, including poverty, health care, and migration, adolescents will most likely play a critical part in the development of social entrepreneurial solutions that affect their own futures. Nonetheless, previous research mostly overlooks adolescents as prospective founders. This paper analyses how cognitive and affective empathy can affect adolescents’ intention to create a social enterprise. Data from 343 adolescents show that respondents are more prone to start a social venture if they have a high level of cognitive empathy. Affective empathy, however, plays a minor role in this regard. This indicates that perspective-taking abilities (i.e. cognitive empathy) are advantageous for the formation of social entrepreneurial intentions in adolescence, while emotional responses (i.e. affective empathy) may be less meaningful. We discuss implications for future research, policy making, and importantly, education to identify and support future social entrepreneurs at an early age.

Individual differences in structural priming in bilingual and monolingual children: the influence of perspective-taking

Abstract When speaking or writing, people tend to re-use the syntactic structures they recently encountered (structural priming). Individuals differ in the extent to which they are primed (primeability). Previous research has suggested that perspective-taking, that is, the ability to imagine the feelings, thoughts and perceptions of others, predicts the magnitude of priming in adults. The present study investigates if this also holds for monolingual and bilingual children. We primed the possessive structure in monolingual Dutch children and bilingual children with varying L2s. There was individual variation in children’s primeability in both groups. For both monolinguals and bilinguals, we found that the better children were at perspective-taking, the more likely they were to be primed. Dutch language proficiency also influenced children’s primeability: higher language proficiency resulted in more priming in both groups. The findings suggest that structural priming serves a social function which is mediated by perspective-taking abilities.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Perspective-taking in a language game.

Many theories of communication claim that perspective-taking is a fundamental component of the successful design of utterances for a specific audience. In three experiments, we investigated perspective-taking in a constrained communication situation: Participants played a word guessing game where each trial required them to select a clue word to communicate a single target word to their partner. In many cases, the task requires participants to take the perspective of their partner when generating, evaluating, and selecting potential clue words. For example, if the target word was 'heart', the first word that came to mind might be 'love', but this would not in fact be a very useful clue word. Instead, a word like 'cardiovascular' is much more likely than 'love' to make the partner guess 'heart'. Pairs of participants took turns giving and receiving clues to guess target words, receiving feedback after each trial. In Experiment 1, participants appeared unable to improve their perspective-taking over repeated interactions, despite a baseline performance that suggested strong perspective-taking abilities. In Experiment 2, which included extensive feedback after each trial and only target words for which good clues existed and which required perspective-taking, some measures of perspective-taking showed modest improvements. In Experiment 3, which was conducted online, we used Experiment 2 feedback with Experiment 1 target words. As in Experiment 1, participants did not improve over the course of the game in Experiment 3. The results of these three experiments show quite strong limits on people's ability to adapt and improve perspective-taking without the context provided by interaction history and growing common ground.

A functional contextual, observer-centric, quantum mechanical, and neuro-symbolic approach to solving the alignment problem of artificial general intelligence: safe AI through intersecting computational psychological neuroscience and LLM architecture for emergent theory of mind.

There have been impressive advancements in the field of natural language processing (NLP) in recent years, largely driven by innovations in the development of transformer-based large language models (LLM) that utilize "attention." This approach employs masked self-attention to establish (via similarly) different positions of tokens (words) within an inputted sequence of tokens to compute the most appropriate response based on its training corpus. However, there is speculation as to whether this approach alone can be scaled up to develop emergent artificial general intelligence (AGI), and whether it can address the alignment of AGI values with human values (called the alignment problem). Some researchers exploring the alignment problem highlight three aspects that AGI (or AI) requires to help resolve this problem: (1) an interpretable values specification; (2) a utility function; and (3) a dynamic contextual account of behavior. Here, a neurosymbolic model is proposed to help resolve these issues of human value alignment in AI, which expands on the transformer-based model for NLP to incorporate symbolic reasoning that may allow AGI to incorporate perspective-taking reasoning (i.e., resolving the need for a dynamic contextual account of behavior through deictics) as defined by a multilevel evolutionary and neurobiological framework into a functional contextual post-Skinnerian model of human language called "Neurobiological and Natural Selection Relational Frame Theory" (N-Frame). It is argued that this approach may also help establish a comprehensible value scheme, a utility function by expanding the expected utility equation of behavioral economics to consider functional contextualism, and even an observer (or witness) centric model for consciousness. Evolution theory, subjective quantum mechanics, and neuroscience are further aimed to help explain consciousness, and possible implementation within an LLM through correspondence to an interface as suggested by N-Frame. This argument is supported by the computational level of hypergraphs, relational density clusters, a conscious quantum level defined by QBism, and real-world applied level (human user feedback). It is argued that this approach could enable AI to achieve consciousness and develop deictic perspective-taking abilities, thereby attaining human-level self-awareness, empathy, and compassion toward others. Importantly, this consciousness hypothesis can be directly tested with a significance of approximately 5-sigma significance (with a 1 in 3.5 million probability that any identified AI-conscious observations in the form of a collapsed wave form are due to chance factors) through double-slit intent-type experimentation and visualization procedures for derived perspective-taking relational frames. Ultimately, this could provide a solution to the alignment problem and contribute to the emergence of a theory of mind (ToM) within AI.

Ağız Sağlığı ve Diş Protez Teknolojisi Öğrencilerinin Empati Düzeylerinin Değerlendirilmesi: Kesitsel Bir Çalışma

This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate empathy levels and perspectives of oral health and dental prosthetic technology students. The study was designed as a survey conducted among second-year students who started clinical education in the Department of Oral Health and Dental Prosthetics Technology at Bingol University Health Services Vocational School. The JSPE-HP version of the physician empathy scale was used to measure empathy levels. A total of 53 students participated in this study, of which 58.5% were dental prosthetic technology students and 41.5% were Oral Health students. The overall average JSPE-HP score for all participants was found to be 74.49±9.55. Although the average empathy score of the female students was higher than that of the male students, no statistically significant difference was found (p=0.293). This study shows that the JSPE-HP scale provides a reliable and valid measure of empathy among vocational school students, and there is no difference in perspective-taking ability based on this measurement. These results suggest that clinical and theoretical education should be added to the development of empathy skills.

PERSPECTIVE-TAKING DECLINE IN OLDER ADULTS WITH AND WITHOUT SUBJECTIVE COGNITIVE DECLINE

Abstract Subjective cognitive decline (SCD), a self-reported decline in cognitive function without objective cognitive decline, is an early risk marker of pathological aging (Jessen et al., 2020). Healthy older adults with SCD(+) were found to have lower objective cognition and increased rates of cognitive decline compared to those without SCD(-) (Morrison & Oliver, 2023). Cognitively-healthy older adults (OA) had shown a decline in perspective-taking abilities compared to younger adults (YA). However, little research has examined whether self-report SCD plays a role in such age-related declines. We examined age-related changes in perspective-taking abilities in OA with and without SCD vis-à-vis YA. Participants were 25 YA (Mage=22.44, range=20-27), 27 SCD- (Mage=68.67, range=60-77), and 20 SCD+ (Mage=66.55, range=60-72). OA were categorized as SCD-/SCD+ based on SCD-Questionnaire (Rami, 2014). SCD- and SCD+ groups were comparable in general cognition (Montreal Cognitive Assessment; p=.91). Participants completed the “owl” task assessing visual perspective-taking (VPT) and the “director” task assessing cognitive perspective-taking (CPT). Kruskal-Wallis tests revealed that YA outperformed OA (Zs>3.52, ps<.001) in VPT, with no significant difference between SCD- and SCD+ (Z=1.27, p=.21). Surprisingly, both YA and SCD+ were better than SCD- in CPT (Zs>2.34, ps<.04), and SCD+ did not differ significantly from YA (Z=0.02, p=.99). Our results suggest that while visual perspective-taking may decline with age regardless of SCD, cognitive perspective-taking may be preserved in older adults with SCD. SCD(+) may signal a hyperawareness of cognitive states in self and others, which in turn stimulate better cognitive perspective-taking. Implications of SCD on social cognition will be discussed.

Foreign Language Learning Enhances Cognitive flexibility, which Facilitates Reported Perspective-taking: Evidence from PISA 2018

Multilingual speakers have often been found to be superior in taking another person’s perspective. Also, females are commonly found to have enhanced perspective-taking (PT) abilities compared with males, with male PT being generally more easily affected by external factors. Research on bilingual advantages has been widely verified in children, adults, and the elderly. However, few researchers have paid attention to the bilingual advantages and perspective-taking in adolescents. Perspective-taking skills are often associated with positive behaviors such as prosocial behavior and understanding others. In this study, we used a large and representative sample derived from the 2018 PISA survey to examine the relationship between bilingual experience, perspective-taking, and cognitive flexibility. The moderating effect of cultural individualism was also analyzed. The results of multi-level structural equation modeling (MSEM) indicate that: (1) foreign language learning is positively associated with perspective-taking and cognitive flexibility after controlling for individual-level and country-level demographic variables; (2) cognitive flexibility mediated the association between foreign language learning and perspective-taking; (3) the moderating effect of cultural individualism is significant. Specifically, in collectivist (vs. individualist) countries/societies, there is a stronger association between foreign language learning and perspective-taking.

Treatment Responsivity in Adolescents With Disruptive Behavior Problems: Co-Creation of a Virtual Reality-Based Add-On Intervention.

We developed Street Temptations (ST) as an add-on intervention to increase the treatment responsivity of adolescents with disruptive behavior problems. ST's primary aim is to improve adolescents' mentalizing abilities in order to help them engage in and benefit from psychotherapy. Additionally, virtual reality (VR) is used to work in a more visual, less verbal, fashion. By recapping the lessons learned while developing ST so far, we aim to design the following study on ST. Furthermore, we aim to enhance the development and study of new health care interventions in clinical practice, together with adolescents as their end users. We followed an iterative co-creation process to develop a prototype of ST, in collaboration with adolescents and professionals from a secured residential facility in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The prototype was tested during a pilot phase, involving 2 test runs, in which 4 adolescents and 4 professionals participated. Qualitative data were collected through interviews with the adolescents and by conducting a group interview with the professionals, in order to gain first insights into ST's usability, feasibility, and its added value to clinical practice. In between the first and second test runs, the prototype was enhanced. On the basis of the complete pilot phase, we reflected on the future development and implementation of ST to design a subsequent study. Over the course of 6 months, ST's first prototype was developed during multiple creative sessions. Included was the development of a short 360° VR video, to serve as a base for the mentalization exercises. The final version of ST consisted of 7 individual therapy sessions, incorporating both the VR video and a VR StreetView app. On the basis of the qualitative data collected during the pilot phase, we found preliminary signs of ST's potential to support adolescents' perspective-taking abilities specifically. Additionally, using VR to focus on real-life situations that adolescents encounter in their daily lives possibly helps to facilitate communication. However, several challenges and requests concerning the VR hardware and software and the implementation of ST emerged, pointing toward further development of ST as an add-on intervention. These challenges currently limit large-scale implementation, resulting in specific requirements regarding a subsequent study. In order to gather more extensive information to shape further development and study treatment effects, a small-scale and individually oriented research design seems currently more suitable than a more standard between-subjects design. Using the reflection on the lessons learned described in this report, a research protocol for a forthcoming study on ST has been developed. By presenting our co-creation journey thus far, we hope to be of inspiration for a more co-creative mindset and in that way contribute to the mutual reinforcement of science and clinical practice.

BlueVR: Design and Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Serious Game for Promoting Understanding towards People with Color Vision Deficiency

People with color vision deficiency (CVD) often encounter color-related challenges in their daily life, which are difficult for those with non-CVD to comprehend fully. Therefore, we designed a Virtual Reality (VR) serious game, BlueVR , to simulate challenging scenarios encountered by people with CVD and facilitate understanding from people with non-CVD. We conducted an empirical study with thirty participants with non-CVD and six participants with CVD to evaluate the opportunities and challenges of BlueVR . Our findings suggest that BlueVR increased people with non-CVD’s understanding, awareness, and perspective-taking abilities towards people with CVD. Moreover, interviews with participants with CVD revealed that BlueVR accurately depicts their real-life discomforts and meets their expectations to improve potential social awareness. This research contributes valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of VR serious games in promoting understanding and design implications for future game development.

Effects of Robot Animacy and Emotional Expressions on Perspective-Taking Abilities: A Comparative Study across Age Groups.

The global population is inevitably aging due to increased life expectancy and declining birth rates, leading to an amplified demand for innovative social and healthcare services. One promising avenue is the introduction of companion robots. These robots are designed to provide physical assistance as well as emotional support and companionship, necessitating effective human-robot interaction (HRI). This study explores the role of cognitive empathy within HRI, focusing on the influence of robot facial animacy and emotional expressions on perspective-taking abilities-a key aspect of cognitive empathy-across different age groups. To this end, a director task involving 60 participants (30 young and 30 older adults) with varying degrees of robot facial animacy (0%, 50%, 100%) and emotional expressions (happy, neutral) was conducted. The results revealed that older adults displayed enhanced perspective-taking with higher animacy faces. Interestingly, while happiness on high-animacy faces improved perspective-taking, the same expression on low-animacy faces reduced it. These findings highlight the importance of considering facial animacy and emotional expressions in designing companion robots for older adults to optimize user engagement and acceptance. The study's implications are pertinent to the design and development of socially effective service robots, particularly for the aging population.

Inconsistency in perspective-taking during comprehension.

In order to successfully comprehend referring expressions, a listener must often consider how the speaker's perspective differs from their own. Such consideration of others' perspective is effortful and not always employed. Previous studies disagree about whether executive function predicts perspective-taking use in language comprehension. Furthermore, it is unclear whether or not there are consistent individual differences of perspective-taking ability in comprehension. This study tested participants in three perspective-taking in comprehension tasks and two measures of executive function to determine whether participants show consistency in their perspective-taking ability and whether this ability is predicted by measures of executive function. We found that (1) some but not all perspective-taking in comprehension tasks correlate with one another, and (2) inhibition control and working memory are not linked with any of the three perspective-taking measures. Based on these findings, we conclude that perspective-taking in comprehension may not be a unitary ability.

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.

Thinking about your future self: Do better perspective-takers make more patient decisions?

Decisions involving costs and rewards materialising at different points in time (intertemporal decisions) are prevalent in everyday life and can have significant consequences for well-being across the lifespan. Recent neuroimaging research points to overlapping neural mechanisms in intertemporal decision-making and perspective-taking, suggesting they may involve common cognitive processes, but there has been limited research examining whether individual differences in these two capacities are related at a behavioural level. The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals with better perspective-taking abilities would make more future-oriented decisions. 235 participants (200 after exclusions) completed an intertemporal choice task, followed by behavioural and self-report measures of perspective-taking. Contrary to expectations, there were no overall correlations between perspective-taking measures and intertemporal decision-making. However, exploratory analysis found that perspective-taking abilities were increasingly associated with future-oriented decisions among participants who perceived themselves to be higher on the socioeconomic ladder, with some evidence indicating that among low socioeconomic status individuals, better perspective-takers may be more likely to discount future rewards. These findings suggest that rather than enabling patience, perspective-taking abilities may facilitate greater flexibility in intertemporal decision-making, potentially increasing or decreasing temporal discounting depending on the environmental context of the decision-maker.

Cognitive mechanisms of perspective-taking across adulthood: An eye-tracking study using the director task.

Perspective-taking plays an important role in daily life, allowing consideration of other people's perspectives and viewpoints. This study used a large sample of 265 community-based participants (aged 20-86 years) to examine changes in perspective-taking abilities-a component of "Theory of Mind"-across adulthood, and how these changes may relate to individual differences in executive functions at different ages. Participants completed a referential-communication task (the "Director" task) while behavioral responses and eye movements were recorded, along with four measures of executive functions (inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and planning). Results revealed a quadratic fit of age in egocentric errors; performance on the task plateaued between 20 to ~37 years old but showed a substantial decline from ~38 years onward (i.e., increased egocentric errors). A similar pattern was established in eye-movement measures, demonstrating that advancing age led to a decrease in efficient attention orientation to a target. In other words, older adults were more distracted by a hidden competitor object (egocentric interference) and were therefore delayed in orienting their attention to the correct target object. Mediation analyses revealed that executive functions partially mediated the effect of age on perspective-taking abilities. Importantly, however, the relationship between age and egocentric bias in task performance remained significant when controlling for changes in executive functions, indicating a decline in social cognition abilities with advancing age that was independent of age-related declines in more domain-general abilities, such as executive functions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).