Perspective-taking Capacity Research Articles

Linking Blood Pressure-Associated Emotional Dampening to Trait Empathy.

Gradual and sustained increases in resting blood pressure are accompanied by gradual and sustained reductions in the capacity to consciously experience several affective and somatosensory processes. Burgeoning theory suggests that this phenomenon, termed cardiovascular emotional dampening, contributes to heart disease risk by interfering with our ability to effectively respond to environmental demands. Interpersonal relationships are contexts in which this risk cascade likely occurs, but prior researchers have paid little attention to how emotional dampening might influence these relationships. As empathy is a construct used to describe facets of emotion-linked responding that facilitate interpersonal relationships, if emotional dampening influences interpersonal relationships, then we might expect resting blood pressure to covary with measures of empathy as it does with other previously studied aspects of affective responding. We recruited 175 healthy undergraduate college student participants (120 Women; M age = 19.17, SD age = 2.08) to complete a counterbalanced procedure in which we measured resting blood pressure and related it to participants' responses on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy, and a demographic survey. Bivariate comparisons revealed a significant inverse relationship between average resting systolic blood pressure (SBP) and cognitive empathy, as well as a significant inverse relationship between SBP and affective empathy. Multiple regression analyses revealed that SBP remained a significant predictor of cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy, after controlling for related covariates (i.e., sex, age, and alexithymia). SBP predicted cognitive empathy such that higher SBP was associated with lower cognitive empathy. Thus, people with higher resting blood pressures might experience increased interpersonal distress because of a reduced capacity for empathetic accuracy and perspective-taking. We discuss the implications and future directions of these findings.

Marital satisfaction, parenting stress, and family alliance: Parental perspective taking as a moderator.

Research has shown that family alliance (FA), operationalized as the quality of mother-father-child triadic interactions, is important for child socioemotional development. However, few studies have investigated the predictors of FA, and there are few longitudinal studies available. Accordingly, this study first examined whether mothers' and fathers' marital satisfaction and parenting stress during infancy predicted FA five years later, when their children entered kindergarten. Second, the moderating role of both parents' perspective-taking capacity as a moderator of these longitudinal associations was examined. The study was conducted with 113 intact families (mother-father-child). Marital satisfaction, parenting stress, and perspective taking were reported by both parents and FA was assessed by observation. Contrary to expectations, neither parent's marital satisfaction or parenting stress was directly related to family alliance. However, significant moderating effects were found for both parents' perspective taking, such that higher paternal and maternal parenting stress predicted poorer FA only among parents with relatively lower perspective-taking capacities. These findings suggest that some aspects of the quality of family interactions when children enter school can be predicted by mothers' and fathers' personal dispositions assessed as early as five years prior.

Psychological maltreatment and self-compassion - the mediating role of shame and perspective-taking

IntroductionPsychological maltreatment such as emotional abuse or neglect is a serious risk factor for poorer mental and somatic health outcomes in life. A higher rate of psychological maltreatment experienced in childhood is a predictor of aversive emotional states such as shame, and can negatively influence factors of mentalization such as perspective-taking capacity in adulthood. However, emotional abuse or neglect are also negative predictors of self-compassion.ObjectivesThe purpose of the study was to test two mediating models. We hypothesized, that reduced perspective-taking capacity, as well as higher levels of shame due to psychological maltreatment can be causally linked to lower levels of self-compassion.MethodsWe collected data from 120 healthy subjects (mean age=29.46, SD = 7.55) from Hungary We used Experience of Shame Scale, Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Childhood Trauma Scale, and the Self-Compassion Scale in our cross-sectional questionnaire study.ResultsPsychological maltreatment is a significant negative predictor of self-compassion (b=-0,712; p<0.05), and shame seems to play a mediating role in this relationship (effect size= 0.231; p<0.05). Psychological maltreatment was not a statistically significant predictor of perspective-taking.ConclusionsOur results highlight that shame has a central role between childhood traumatization and psychological well-being. In the case of early emotional maltreatment we have to focus on shame for higher levels of self-compassion and effective healing in psychotherapy.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Ontogenetic steps of understanding beliefs: From practical to theoretical

ABSTRACT In this article, we postulate that belief understanding unfolds in two steps over ontogenetic time. We propose that belief understanding begins in interactive scenarios in which infants and toddlers respond directly and second-personally to the actions of a misinformed agent. This early understanding of beliefs is practical and grounded in the capacity for perspective-taking. Practical belief understanding guarantees effective interaction and communication with others who are acting on false assumptions. In a second step, children, at preschool age, acquire the capacity to reflect on and arrive at third-personal judgments about a misinformed agent’s perspective. This capacity is theoretical and grounded in the ability to “confront” perspectives. It allows children to understand that beliefs can misrepresent the state of the world and to predict what (past, future, or hypothetical) actions follow from these beliefs. We conclude with ideas on how practical perspective-taking develops into theoretical perspective-confronting in early ontogeny.

The Efficacy of a Holding Community Program—Promoting Social Reflection at School

The authors developed a Holding Community Program to achieve the following objectives: (a) to increase the perspective-taking capacity of adolescents; (b) to promote interpersonal and intergroup harmony; (c) to empower school students to be more (pro)active in their communities and in public life. Apart from the intervention itself, the study comprised a pre-test and a post-test and involved a total of 240 Hungarian high school students (159 female, 66.3%). The students were aged 14–18 (Mage=15.33; SDage=0.88). They were recruited from four high schools. Control groups (N=122) were chosen from the same institution and graded as experimental classes (N=118, 7 classes). Both immediate and long-term effects of the intervention (4–6 months after the intervention) were explored. Quantitative analysis of the data indicated that the two-day intervention program had significantly increased the students’ perspective-taking capacity (short-term: F(1,238)=6.03, p<0.05, long-term: n.s.) and efficacy beliefs (short-term: F(1,238)= 3.83, p=0.052, long-term: F(1,238)= 3.38, p<0.05). After the training, students were more willing to participate in collective actions (short-term: F(1,238)= 7.32, p<0.01, long-term: F(1,238)= 3.83, p<0.05). These results seem quite promising but the outcome was not significant regarding its effect on prejudice.

Rational, emotional, or both? Subcomponents of psychopathy predict opposing moral decisions.

Recent research has documented a small but significant correlation between psychopathic capacities and utilitarian moral judgment, although the findings are generally inconsistent and unclear. We propose that one way to make sense of mixed findings is to consider variation in perspective‐taking capacities of psychopathic individuals. With this in mind, we had criminal offenders (n = 60), who varied in their psychopathy levels according to the Psychopathy Checklist‐Revised (PCL‐R), respond to common sacrificial moral dilemmas (e.g., trolley dilemmas) under different conditions. In a baseline condition, participants simply responded to the sacrificial moral dilemmas as is typically done in previous research. In an “emotion‐salient” condition, participants had to reason about the emotions of another person after solving moral dilemmas (deliberative processing). In the “emotion‐ambiguous” condition, participants saw images of people in distress, after solving moral dilemmas, but did not have to explicitly reason about such emotions (spontaneous processing). The four PCL‐R facets predicted distinct interference effects depending on spontaneous versus deliberative processing of hypothetical victim's emotions. The findings suggest that the use of a multi‐faceted approach to account for cognitive and moral correlates of psychopathy may help address previously mixed results. Implications and future directions for theory and research are discussed.

Disturbances of Shared Intentionality in Schizophrenia and Autism.

Schizophrenia and autism are today considered complex spectrum disorders characterized by difficulties in social behavior. Drawing on recent advances in collective or shared intentionality studies, we present a novel theoretical approach to these social difficulties by exploring them from the angle of shared intentionality. We begin by describing two forms of shared intentionality: joint intentionality and we-intentionality. Joint intentionality crucially relies on the agents' mentalizing abilities such as mind reading and the ability to factor in (or “to be moved” by) their partner's intentions in deliberation and action planning. By contrast, we-intentionality relies on the agents' capacity to understand themselves as group members and to adopt the group's perspective. In schizophrenia spectrum disorders, we propose that joint intentionality remains unaffected, but we-intentionality may be impaired. In severe autism spectrum disorder (i.e., infantile autism), we propose that both forms of shared intentionality are impaired. We suggest that the source of the problems affecting we-intentionality in schizophrenia spectrum disorders lies primarily in trait-like, anomalous self-experiences. In severe autism spectrum disorder, we suggest that problems with mind reading, the ability to “be moved” by others' intentions, and with the capacity for perspective-taking impede both forms of shared intentionality.

Incorporating Diversity Into Undergraduate Nonprofit Management Education: Can Reading Diverse Narratives Increase Students’ Perspective-Taking Capacity?

Although the use of narratives has been shown to increase students’ ability to empathize, which can be an indicator of their perspective-taking ability, no studies have focused on the use of narratives specifically within the context of nonprofit management education. In this study, we tested a pedagogical technique designed to increase students’ perspective-taking capacity. Specifically, we incorporated reading assignments of personal narratives by a diverse body of nonprofit leaders into two undergraduate nonprofit management courses: one an in-person course at a large public land-grant university in the Southeastern United States ( n = 85) and the other an online course at a large public university in the Northeastern United States ( n = 20). We conducted pre- and postinstruction assessments to explore whether the use of these narratives enhanced students’ empathy and perspective-taking abilities. Our findings indicate that narratives are effective in improving perspective-taking skills and can be effective in both online courses and in-person courses. These findings should be of interest to nonprofit management educators. Subscribe to JNEL

Information structure in language acquisition. Production and comprehension of (in)definite articles by German-speaking children.

The present study investigates the production and comprehension of indefinite and definite articles as markers of givenness by typically-developing German-speaking children, from the perspective of information structure theory. The study involves 93 typically-developing children aged four to seven years old with normal language-skills and 20 adults. The results of a story-narration task and a truth-value judgment task reveal that children have more problems with new than with given referents in production as well as comprehension suggesting a "given better than new"-pattern. These findings are explained in the context of perspective-taking capacities and cue weighting theory.

Creating a culture of respect and interprofessional teamwork on a labor and birth unit: a multifaceted quality improvement project

ABSTRACTInterprofessional teamwork is essential to high-quality healthcare, however disrespect and incivility amongst team members is a challenge to creating and sustaining effective teams. We describe and assess the impact of a multifaceted improvement project with the primary intervention being a Compassionate Communication (CC) training on a Labor and Birth unit. Our hypothesis was this improvement project would increase staff members’ capacity for perspective-taking and self-reflection, which would in turn correlate with positive interpersonal interactions, respect and teamwork. Secondly, we hypothesized that enhanced respect and teamwork would correlate with enhanced affective commitment to the organization. Staff was surveyed midway through the project and 6 months after the CC training. A total of 74 (57%) staff completed the initial pre-training surveys and 50 (38%) staff completed post-training surveys. At 6 months post-CC training we saw changes in self-reflection and an awakening of self-awareness. There were no significant changes in perspective-taking. However, we did see changes in staffs’ perceptions of respect and teamwork. Team members’ affective commitment to the organization increased. In this Labor and Birth setting, a multifaceted improvement project with the primary intervention being CC training was beneficial in improving a culture of respect and interprofessional teamwork.

The Relation Between Empathy and Insight in Psychiatric Disorders: Phenomenological, Etiological, and Neuro-Functional Mechanisms.

Lack of insight, i.e., unawareness of one’s mental illness, is frequently encountered in psychiatric conditions. Insight is the capacity to recognize (psychical insight) and accept one’s mental illness (emotional insight). Insight growth necessitates developing an objective perspective on one’s subjective pathological experiences. Therefore, insight has been posited to require undamaged self-reflexion and cognitive perspective-taking capacities. These enable patients to look objectively at themselves from the imagined perspective of someone else. Preserved theory-of-mind performances have been reported to positively impact insight in psychosis. However, some patients with schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorders, although recognizing their mental disease, are still not convinced of this and do not accept it. Hence, perspective-taking explains psychical insight (recognition) but not emotional insight (acceptance). Here, we propose a new conceptual model. We hypothesize that insight growth relies upon the association of intact self-reflexion and empathic capacities. Empathy (feeling into someone else) integrates heterocentered visuo-spatial perspective (feeling into), embodiment, affective (feeling into) and cognitive processes, leading to internally experience the other’s thought. We posit that this subjective experience enables to better understand the other’s thought about oneself and to affectively adhere to this. We propose that the process of objectification, resulting from empathic heterocentered, embodiment, and cognitive processes, generates an objective viewpoint on oneself. It enables to recognize one’s mental illness and positively impacts psychical insight. The process of subjectification, resulting from empathic affective processes, enables to accept one’s illness and positively impacts emotional insight. That is, affectively experiencing the thought of another person about oneself reinforces the adhesion of the emotional system to the objective recognition of the disease. Applying our model to different psychiatric disorders, we predict that the negative effect of impaired self-reflexion and empathic capacities on insight is a transnosographic state and that endophenotypical differences modulate this common state, determining a psychiatric disease as specific.

On matryoshkas and meaning-making: Understanding the plasticity of climate change

Climate change is a complex issue and means different things to different people. Numerous scholars in history, philosophy, and psychology have explored these multiple meanings, referred to as the plasticity of climate change. Building on psychological research that seeks to explain why meanings differ, I present an analytical framework that draws on adult developmental psychology to explore how meaning is constructed, and how it may become increasingly more complex across a lifespan in a nested manner, much like Russian dolls (or matryoshkas). I then use the framework to analyze photo voice data from a case study about local perspectives on climate change in El Salvador. The main finding from this analysis is that a developmental approach can help to make sense of why there is such plasticity of meanings about climate change. Using photos and their interpretations to illustrate these findings, I examine how perspective-taking capacities arrive at different meanings about climate change, based on the object of awareness, complexity of thought, and scope of time. I then discuss implications of this preliminary work on how developmental psychology could help climate change scholar-practitioners to understand and align with different climate change meanings and support local actors to translate their own meanings about climate change into locally-owned actions.

Pedagogical methods promoting development of the multi-perspective attitude in early age children

Children’s perspective-taking skills and multi-perspective attitudes comprise the basis for their social competence. From the educational point of view, it is particularly important to demonstrate the methods that promote children’s understanding of their own and others’ perspectives, since these enable them to develop a multi-perspective attitude. The article discusses perspective-taking skills (perceptive, cognitive, affective) and shows the stages of the development of perspective-taking skills in early childhood through discussion of research on social perspective-taking and visuospatial perspective-taking. The article also attempts to synthesise the conclusions of research with respect to the development of perspective-taking and the multi-perspective attitude. Qualitative research is presented through which the methods utilised by teachers to develop the perspective-taking capacities of groups of 5-6 year olds are demonstrated. Keywords: perspective-taking, multi-perspective attitude, child, early childhood education. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15823/p.2018.132.5

Suppression of Sensorimotor Alpha Power Associated With Pain Expressed by an Avatar: A Preliminary EEG Study.

Several studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed that empathic capabilities are associated with the activation (and deactivation) of relatively specific neural circuits. A growing number of electroencephalography studies also suggest that it might be useful to assess empathy. The main goal of this study was to use quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) to test whether observation of pain expressed by an avatar (virtual reality) induces a suppression of alpha waves over sensorimotor cortical areas, as it is observed with human stimuli. Not only was it the case, but also the magnitude of alpha suppression was correlated with perspective-taking capacity of participants. Both empathy levels and magnitude of sensorimotor alpha suppression (SAS) were significantly higher in women than men. Interestingly, a significant interaction emerged between levels of individual empathy and specificity of experimental instructions, where SAS in participants with good perspective-taking was higher during passive observation of the distressed avatar, while the opposite was true during an active (trying to understand) condition. These results suggest that: (1) synthetic characters are able to elicit SAS; (2) SAS is indeed associated with perspective-taking capacities; (3) Persons with poorer perspective-taking capacities can show significant SAS when proper instructions are provided. Therefore, qEEG represents a low-cost objective approach to measure perspective-taking abilities.

Caring for the healthcare professional

PurposeHospitals must systematically support employees in innovative ways to uphold a culture of care that strengthens the system. At a leading Canadian academic pediatric rehabilitation hospital, over 90 percent of clinicians viewed Schwartz Rounds™ (SR) as a hospital priority, resulting in its formal implementation as a quality improvement initiative. The purpose of this paper is to describe how the hospital implemented SR to support the socio-emotional impact of providing care.Design/methodology/approachThis quantitative descriptive study provides a snapshot of the impact of each SR through online surveys at four assessment points (SR1-SR4). A total of 571 responses were collected.FindingsAll four SR addressed needs of staff as 92.9-97.6 percent of attendees reported it had a positive impact, and 96.4-100 percent of attendees reported each SR was relevant. Attendees reported significantly greater communication with co-workers after each SR (p<0.001) and more personal conversations with supervisors after SR2 and SR4 (p<0.05) compared to non-attendees. Attending SR also increased their perspective-taking capacity across the four SR.Practical implicationsAs evidenced in this quality improvement initiative, SR addresses staff’s need for time to process the socio-emotional impacts of care and to help reduce those at risk for compassion fatigue. SR supports and manages the emotional healthcare culture, which has important implications for quality patient care.Originality/valueThis research details an organization’s process to implement SR and highlights the importance of taking care of the care provider.

Understanding others: a pilot investigation of cognitive and affective facets of social cognition in patients with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS)

BackgroundAlthough significant impairments in the affective and cognitive facets of social cognition have been highlighted in patients with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) in previous studies, these domains have never been investigated simultaneously within the same group of participants. Furthermore, despite theoretical evidence, associations between these two processes and schizotypal symptoms or social difficulties in this population have been scarcely examined.MethodsTwenty-nine participants with 22q11DS and 27 typically developing controls (N = 5 siblings; N = 22 unrelated controls) aged between 11 and 21 years participated in the study. Both groups were matched for age and gender distribution. Two computerized social cognition tasks evaluating perspective and emotion recognition abilities were administered to all participants. The levels of schizotypal trait expression and social functioning were further investigated in both groups, based on a validated self-report questionnaire (Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire) and parental interview (Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales).ResultsParticipants with 22q11DS exhibited lower perspective-taking and emotion recognition capacities than typically developing controls. The two socio-cognitive dimensions investigated here were further correlated in healthy controls. The efficiency of perspective-taking processes (response time) was marginally related to the degree of schizotypal trait expression in patients with 22q11DS.ConclusionsThis study first provides support for significant deficits in two core facets of social cognition in 22q11DS. The associations observed between the experimental tasks and measures of social functioning or schizotypal symptoms in 22q11DS open promising research avenue, which should be more deeply investigated in future studies.

Prioritization of self-relevant perspectives in ageing.

This study investigated whether age-related sensitivity to self-relevance may benefit perspective taking, despite generally poorer perspective-taking capacity in older adults. In one perceptual matching task and two visual perspective-taking paradigms, we examined age differences in sensitivity to avatars representing self and other. In the matching task, older (60-83 years) and younger (18-20 years) adults were similarly biased toward the self- versus other-associated avatar. In the perspective-taking tasks, participants viewed these avatars within a virtual room. Task-relevant perspectives were either the same (i.e., congruent) or different (i.e., incongruent). In the 3PP-3PP task, both avatars were present, and participants adopted the perspective of one or the other. As in the matching task, young and old were similarly biased toward the self-associated avatar. However, age differences emerged in the 1PP-3PP task, which presented only one avatar per trial (varying between self and other), and participants responded based on their own first-person perspective or the avatar's. In summary, age modulated the ability to take perspectives primarily when participants' own first-person perspective was task relevant. Relative to younger adults, older adults prioritized the self (vs. other) avatar more during initial perspective computation and the first-person (vs. third-person) perspective more when selecting between incongruent perspectives.

The impact of leadership coaching in an Australian healthcare setting

PurposeThere is limited empirical literature on the effectiveness of leadership coaching in healthcare settings. The purpose of this paper is to explore the efficacy of leadership coaching for individuals implementing strategic change in the Australian public health system.Design/methodology/approachUsing a within-subjects (pre-post) design, participants (n=31) undertook six one-hour coaching sessions. Coaching was conducted by professional leadership coaches. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected.FindingsParticipation was associated with significant improvements in goal attainment, solution-focused thinking, leadership self-efficacy, perspective-taking capacity, self-insight and resilience, and ambiguity tolerance. There were significant reductions in stress and anxiety. The benefits of coaching transferred from the workplace to the home. Many participants reported being able to use insights gained in coaching in their personal lives, and reported better work/life balance, less stress and better quality relationships at home.Originality/valueFew studies have provided evaluation of leadership coaching in healthcare setting. Leadership coaching in the public health system may be an important methodology for facilitating goal attainment and fostering resilience in this vital social sector, benefiting workers in the health services, their families and ultimately their patients and the broader community.

Positive Peer Pressure and Behavioral Support

Peer influence can be observed from a very young age to adults as well. With the difference in age group, the influences also seems to differ and individual differences of also affects how and which individual will be more susceptible to good or bad peer pressure. However, peer influence at adolescent period is optimum. The reason for this can be varied, it can be because, at that age adolescents are at a school set up most of the time surrounded by peers, need for acceptance, as they are growing and maturing. Classmates as peers can serve as a powerful source of reinforcement in increasing or maintaining both the positive and negative behaviors of their classmates. Becoming a member of a peer group is one of the immediate effects of adolescence. Peer groups influence adolescent society and identity by allowing young people to explore individual interests and uncertainties while retaining a sense of belonging and rank within a group of friends.Jean Piaget (1932), in his earliest writings, portrayed children's relationships with peers as being relatively balanced and egalitarian. Within this egalitarian context Piaget believed children could have experiences to examine different ideas, to negotiate and discuss multiple opinions, and to decide to compromise with or to reject the opinions held by peers. From such interactions, Piaget argued that children come to develop the capacity for sensitive perspective-taking or the ability to understand the thoughts, feelings and viewpoints of others was thought to lay the foundation for socially competent behavior and meaningful social relationships. Jean Piaget (1958) added a cognitive perspective on how friendships promoted young people's capacity for social perspective taking. Researchers conducted on peers have revealed ambivalent results as to peer pressure in adolescents are positive or negative. Peer influences exist in groups as well as dyadic relationships. Apart from this, the groups that individuals form can be both social and in institutional environments. One important factor about institutional groups is that, the group will have a positive impact on its members pertaining to academics as well. The peer influence in an institutional environment can be dyadic mostly. Adolescents have 'best friends' and this one best friend can heavily influence one another. The best friend's advice at this stage is at times more important than parent's advice, and therefore, has the supreme power to influence the other.Positive peer pressure is an encouragement by peers to do something good. It may consist of joining an athletic team, helping out someone, influence of better grades, convincing someone to stop smoking, drinking, or doing drugs. Students who influence other students bring out positive peer pressure. This may work better than parental involvement because students listen to what their friends say during adolescents. Peer pressure can work both ways but the trick is to find out which pressures are healthyDifferent psychological factors like self- esteem, confidence plays a defining role in which members will influence whom. It is not restrained to groups but it is also applicable to dyadic relationships too. The one who is confident, have leadership skills will tend to influence the ones will low self esteem. We as social beings have the need for acceptance and this need for acceptance can be fulfilled by peers, especially for adolescents. Friends are a great source of support givers for adolescents. As adolescents grow physically and psychologically, they learn new things every day, some of them may not be able to share their experiences with adults and therefore their peers are the best people that they can confide on. Thus a natural inclination for their peers is formed.Some of the techniques that can be usedfor behavioral support are:* Peer influence can be used as a reinforcement in various set ups.* For academic improvement, in a school set up, pairing up can be done of a high achiever and academically poor students. …

INTRODUCTION FOR THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON SPACE, TIME AND EVALUATION IN IDEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE

In the last decade, a cognitive school has begun to emerge in critical discourse analysis (CDA). Based in cognitive linguistics, this approach sees language as providing a set of indexical prompts for jointly performing a range of conceptual operations constitutive of meaning (Hart, 2010). This view of language argues that the semiotic processes involved in language rely on more general cognitive principles and processes that also function in domains such as vision, action, memory and reasoning (Croft & Cruse, 2004). One fundamental cognitive ability which seems to be crucial for meaning construction in language is a capacity for perspective-taking (Levinson, 2003; Talmy, 2000). In the real world, we necessarily adopt a continually shifting spatial perspective as we negotiate the physical environment. Equally, we experience perspective in remembering, empathizing and judging. In understanding discourse, at any moment in the unfolding text, the hearer is invited to share with the speaker a particular perspective indexed by elements present or presupposed in the text and defined within a mental model. This perspective is not restricted to spatial point of view, but includes also points of view conceptualized in social, temporal, epistemic and deontic ‘space’ (Croft & Cruse, 2004). Such perspectives provide an anchorage point in an intersubjective worldview. Other information in the worldview expressed by the text is organized, evaluated and deliberated over relative to this deictic point of reference (Chilton, 2004). Cognitive approaches to language have modelled the worldviews indexed in text and invoked in the course of discourse in terms of ‘text worlds’ (Werth, 1999), ‘mental spaces’ (Fauconnier, 1994), and, geometrically, in terms of coordinate sets in a threedimensional ‘deictic discourse space’ (Chilton, 2014). Perspective is defined within these models as the ‘background’, ‘base’ or the ‘deictic centre’. What these models have in common is that textual information is cognitively represented relative to some starting point defined as the conceptualizer’s presumed spatial, social, temporal, epistemic and deontic ‘ground’ (cf Hart, 2014; Langacker, 2008). An important challenge for linguistics and discourse analysis, then, is to address how concepts such as distance and focus, which structure our worldviews, are signified in discourse. Here, certain textual elements such as deictic adverbs, personal pronouns and modal verbs have already been identified. However, as the papers included in this special issue demonstrate, the story is certainly much more complex. The role of cognitive worlds and points of view in understanding texts has been studied in branches of discourse analysis such as Stylistics and Poetics (Dancygier, Sanders, & Vandelanotte, 2012; Dancygier & Sweetser, 2012; Stockwell, 2009). However, Critical Discourse Studies, 2015 Vol. 12, No. 3, 235–237, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2015.1013480