Perspective-taking Task Research Articles

Spatial Perspective-Taking in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Predictive Role of Visuospatial and Motor Abilities.

Despite its impact on everyday functioning, spatial perspective-taking has rarely been investigated in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and previous findings are surprisingly sparse and inconsistent. In the present study, we aimed to investigate spatial perspective-taking abilities in children and adolescents with ASD without intellectual disabilities, comparing them with a group of typically developing (TD) peers. Our objectives were: (i) to test similarities and differences between these groups in a spatial perspective-taking task; and (ii) to see whether similar or different underlying processes (i.e., fine and gross motor skills, and visuospatial abilities) might account for the groups’ performance in the spatial perspective-taking task. A group of children with ASD (N = 36) was compared with a TD group (N = 39), aged from 8 to 16 years. Participants were administered tasks assessing spatial perspective-taking, fine and gross motor skills, visuo-constructive abilities, visuospatial working memory, visual imagery, and mental rotation. Our results revealed that the ASD group had more difficulty with the spatial perspective-taking task than the TD group. The two groups also had some shared and some different processes that predicted their perspective-taking performance: a significant predictive effect of fine motor skills and visuospatial working memory emerged for both groups, while gross motor skills (i.e., walking heel-to-toe) and visuospatial imagery only revealed a role in the TD group. These findings suggest that different abilities might account for the two groups’ performance in the spatial perspective-taking task. Gross motor skills and complex visuospatial abilities seem to be more important in sustaining spatial perspective-taking ability in typical development than in the event of ASD. Some of the clinical and educational implications of these findings are discussed.

The influence of attachment styles on autonomic correlates of perspective-taking

This study examined the effects of attachment styles on physiological responses during a perspective-taking task. Sixty-eight participants were selected according to attachment styles. Physiological responses were assessed using skin conductance responses (SCRs) in the three attachment groups (secure, insecure-anxious and insecure-avoidant) during the presentation of attachment-based pictures (distress, comfort or neutral) in two different perspective-taking conditions: self perspective-taking (i.e. imagine how you would feel in the given situation) or other perspective-taking (i.e. imagine how that person could feel in this situation). In the self perspective-taking condition, insecure-anxious individuals displayed higher SCRs than secure individuals for distress pictures. In the other perspective-taking condition, insecure-anxious individuals showed higher SCRs than secure individuals for comfort pictures. The results also showed a strong negative association between self-reported perspective-taking tendencies and SCRs in secure individuals. The findings suggest that perspective-taking plays an important role in the modulation of physiological responses in reaction to attachment-related pictures, which varies according to attachment styles.

Reduced egocentric bias when perspective-taking compared with working from rules.

Previous research has suggested that adults are sometimes egocentric, erroneously attributing their current beliefs, perspectives, and opinions to others. Interestingly, this egocentricity is sometimes stronger when perspective-taking than when working from functionally identical but non-perspectival rules. Much of our knowledge of egocentric bias comes from Level 1 perspective-taking (e.g., judging whether something is seen) and judgements made about narrated characters or avatars rather than truly social stimuli such as another person in the same room. We tested whether adults would be egocentric on a Level 2 perspective-taking task (judging how something appears), in which they were instructed to indicate on a continuous colour scale the colour of an object as seen through a filter. In our first experiment, we manipulated the participants’ knowledge of the object’s true colour. We also asked participants to judge either what the filtered colour looked like to themselves or to another person present in the room. We found participants’ judgements did not vary across conditions. In a second experiment, we instead manipulated how much participants knew about the object’s colour when it was filtered. We found that participants were biased towards the true colour of the object when making judgements about targets they could not see relative to targets they could, but that this bias disappeared when the instruction was to imagine what the object looked like to another person. We interpret these findings as indicative of reduced egocentricity when considering other people’s experiences of events relative to considering functionally identical but abstract rules.

Using the Walking Corsi test to explain age-related differences between young and older adults’ rotation performance

ABSTRACT This study newly assessed visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) in young and older adults with an extended version of the backward Corsi Blocks Task (CBT): the backward Walking Corsi Test (WalCT). It involves recalling sequences of spatial locations while moving in an indoor space (2.5 × 3m) in which the CBT layout is recreated on the floor. The specific contribution of the backward WalCT (beyond that of the backward CBT) to explaining age-related effects on spatial rotation abilities was explored. Seventy young adults and 56 older adults performed the backward WalCT, classic VSWM tasks, self-assessments on pleasure in exploring and spatial anxiety, and mental rotation and perspective-taking tasks. Mediation models for the mental rotation and perspective-taking measures showed a direct age-related effect on both the backward WalCT and backward CBT, and an indirect one on the two spatial rotation abilities, mediated by the backward WalCT and – partly – the backward CBT. In particular, age-related effects on mental rotation were explained by the backward WalCT, while those on perspective-taking were explained by both the backward WalCT and backward CBT. The backward WalCT can be considered a measure suitable for assessing VSWM in older adults, which also explains age-related effects on mental rotation and perspective-taking performance.

The Right Temporoparietal Junction Is Causally Associated with Embodied Perspective-taking.

A prominent theory claims that the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) is especially associated with embodied processes relevant to perspective-taking. In the present study, we use high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation to provide evidence that the rTPJ is causally associated with the embodied processes underpinning perspective-taking. Eighty-eight young human adults were stratified to receive either rTPJ or dorsomedial PFC anodal high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation in a sham-controlled, double-blind, repeated-measures design. Perspective-tracking (line-of-sight) and perspective-taking (embodied rotation) were assessed using a visuo-spatial perspective-taking task that required understanding what another person could see or how they see it, respectively. Embodied processing was manipulated by positioning the participant in a manner congruent or incongruent with the orientation of an avatar on the screen. As perspective-taking, but not perspective-tracking, is influenced by bodily position, this allows the investigation of the specific causal role for the rTPJ in embodied processing. Crucially, anodal stimulation to the rTPJ increased the effect of bodily position during perspective-taking, whereas no such effects were identified during perspective-tracking, thereby providing evidence for a causal role for the rTPJ in the embodied component of perspective-taking. Stimulation to the dorsomedial PFC had no effect on perspective-tracking or taking. Therefore, the present study provides support for theories postulating that the rTPJ is causally involved in embodied cognitive processing relevant to social functioning.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The ability to understand another's perspective is a fundamental component of social functioning. Adopting another perspective is thought to involve both embodied and nonembodied processes. The present study used high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) and provided causal evidence that the right temporoparietal junction is involved specifically in the embodied component of perspective-taking. Specifically, HD-tDCS to the right temporoparietal junction, but not another hub of the social brain (dorsomedial PFC), increased the effect of body position during perspective-taking, but not tracking. This is the first causal evidence that HD-tDCS can modulate social embodied processing in a site-specific and task-specific manner.

Distinguishing Oneself From Others: Spontaneous Perspective-Taking in First-Episode Schizophrenia and its relation to Mentalizing and Psychotic Symptoms

Abstract Characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia, such as thought broadcasting, verbal hallucinations, and delusions of being controlled, suggest a failure in distinguishing between oneself and others. In addition, patients frequently experience mentalizing deficits, which could be related to such a failure. Here we investigated the tendency to distinguish self and other with a visual perspective-taking task that measures to what extent individuals spontaneously take another’s perspective when having to process their own (altercentric intrusion) or vice versa (egocentric intrusion). This was done in 22 patients with first-episode schizophrenia and 23 matched healthy controls. We assessed whether patients displayed altered altercentric or egocentric intrusion and whether such alterations are related to mentalizing deficits—as measured with the Animated Triangles Task (ATT) and The Awareness of Social Inference Task (TASIT) —and/or specific psychotic symptoms, suggestive of problems with self-other distinction. The results showed that patients display similar egocentric intrusion and increased altercentric intrusion compared to controls. Degree of altercentric intrusion was associated with severity of delusions and hallucinations that have been tied to problems with self-other distinction but not with unrelated delusions and hallucinations or negative symptom severity. Higher altercentric intrusion was also associated with better TASIT performance in both patients and controls; suggesting that it may also be beneficial. In conclusion, patients display difficulties inhibiting representations of the other when having to process self-relevant information. A failure to control or distinguish the 2 representations could give rise to the experience that others have access to and control of your thoughts and actions.

Perspective-taking across cultures: shared biases in Taiwanese and British adults.

The influential hypothesis by Markus & Kitayama (Markus, Kitayama 1991. Psychol. Rev. 98, 224) postulates that individuals from interdependent cultures place others above self in interpersonal contexts. This led to the prediction and finding that individuals from interdependent cultures are less egocentric than those from independent cultures (Wu, Barr, Gann, Keysar 2013. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7, 1–7; Wu, Keysar. 2007 Psychol. Sci. 18, 600–606). However, variation in egocentrism can only provide indirect evidence for the Markus and Kitayama hypothesis. The current study sought direct evidence by giving British (independent) and Taiwanese (interdependent) participants two perspective-taking tasks on which an other-focused ‘altercentric’ processing bias might be observed. One task assessed the calculation of simple perspectives; the other assessed the use of others' perspectives in communication. Sixty-two Taiwanese and British adults were tested in their native languages at their home institutions of study. Results revealed similar degrees of both altercentric and egocentric interference between the two cultural groups. This is the first evidence that listeners account for a speaker's limited perspective at the cost of their own performance. Furthermore, the shared biases point towards similarities rather than differences in perspective-taking across cultures.

Difficulties in spontaneously performing level 2 perspective-taking skills in children with autism spectrum disorder

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate why children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to respond to tasks from their own perspective. The authors investigated the effects of explicitness of viewpoint on performance of spontaneous level 2 perspective-taking skills in six- to eight-year-old children with ASD. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted visual perspective-taking tasks with explicit and implicit instructions about the viewpoint to be used. Participants operated a toy car on a map while listening to the experimenter’s instructions. In the implicit condition, when the experimenter said “Turn right/left” at each intersection, the participants moved the car accordingly. Subsequently, in the explicit condition, the experimenter said “Look from the driver’s viewpoint and turn right/left” at each intersection. Findings In the implicit condition, the authors did not observe a clear developmental change in performance between six- and eight-year-old children in the ASD group. In contrast, performance in the ASD group improved under the explicit condition relative to that under the implicit condition. Originality/value The results suggest six- to eight-year-old children with ASD tend not to spontaneously use level 2 perspective-taking skills. Therefore, viewpoints should be explicitly instructed to children with ASD. In addition, it is also important to implement training to encourage spontaneous transitions from self-perspective to other-perspective under the implicit condition.

Does interference between self and other perspectives in theory of mind tasks reflect a common underlying process? Evidence from individual differences in theory of mind and inhibitory control

Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to understand that other agents have different beliefs, desires, and knowledge than oneself, has been extensively researched. Theory of mind tasks involve participants dealing with interference between their self-perspective and another agent’s perspective, and this interference has been related to executive function, particularly to inhibitory control. This study assessed whether there are individual differences in self–other interference, and whether these effects are due to individual differences in executive function. A total of 142 participants completed two ToM (the director task and a Level 1 visual perspective-taking task), which both involve self–other interference, and a battery of inhibitory control tasks. The relationships between the tasks were examined using path analysis. Results showed that the self–other interference effects of the two ToM tasks were dissociable, with individual differences in performance on the ToM tasks being unrelated and performance in each predicted by different inhibitory control tasks. We suggest that self–other differences are part of the nature of ToM tasks, but self–other interference is not a unitary construct. Instead, self–other differences result in interference effects in various ways and at different stages of processing, and these effects may not be a major limiting step for adults’ performance on typical ToM tasks. Further work is needed to assess other factors that may limit adults’ ToM performance and hence explain individual differences in social ability.

A computerized spatial orientation test.

In three experiments, we compared performance on a paper-based perspective-taking task (the Spatial Orientation Test [SOT]; Hegarty & Waller, 2004) with performance on a computer-based version of the task. The computer-based version automates scoring angular errors, allows for different stimulus orders to be given to each participant, and allows for different testing time limits. In Experiment 1, the two media used different objects and mirror-image stimulus arrays in the two versions to mitigate the effects of memory for specific objects or responses. In Experiments 2 and 3, the two media used identical objects (also in a mirrored arrangement), to provide a more equivalent between-media comparison. We also substituted new objects for objects in the original version that had an inherent front/back (e.g., a car) and/or that were animate; directional or animate objects may add variance that is unrelated to perspective-taking ability. Experiment 3 used clarified instructions and a sample size sufficient to examine relatively small differences between the media as well as sex differences. Overall, the computer-based version produced performance that was similar to that of the paper-based version in terms of the rank-order of the participants. The new computer and paper versions of the SOT also had similar correlations with the Money Road Map test and the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction questionnaire, adding support to the claim that the computerized SOT is tapping into the same skill as the paper-based version. We provide a Java version of the new SOT, along with pdf files of instructions and practice stimuli, on the Open Science Framework website.

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.

Preschoolers Flexibly Shift Between Speakers' Perspectives During Real-Time Language Comprehension.

In communicative situations, preschoolers use shared knowledge, or "common ground," to guide their interpretation of a speaker's referential intent. Using eye-tracking measures, this study investigated the time course of 4-year-olds' (n=95) use of two different speakers' perspectives and assessed how individual differences in this ability related to individual differences in executive function and representational skills. Gaze measures indicated partner-specific common ground guided children's interpretation from the earliest moments of language processing. Nonegocentric online processing was positively correlated with performance on a Level 2 visual perspective-taking task. These results demonstrate that preschoolers readily use the perspectives of multiple partners to guide language comprehension and that more advanced representational skills are associated with the rapid integration of common ground information.

Enhancing the elicitation of diverse decision objectives for public planning

Identifying objectives is essential for decision making, but individuals have difficulties stating their important objectives. In public and environmental decisions, the diverse views of stakeholders should be included, but eliciting a broad set of objectives is challenging. We (1) study the effectiveness of individual brainstorming for eliciting objectives in a real-world setting; (2) test three interventions to support individuals in generating objectives; (3) investigate which and how many stakeholders are necessary to generate a comprehensive set of objectives; and (4) develop a feasible elicitation procedure for practice. In an experimental test, 71 stakeholders participated in five decisions about regional wastewater infrastructure planning in Switzerland. Three interventions were tested with an online survey procedure: (i) providing category cues, (ii) a perspective-taking task, and (iii) providing a predefined master list of objectives. In simple brainstorming, participants stated few objectives (M = 3.3) associated with 2.9 different categories on average. Participants consistently missed objectives they later considered important. Providing a master list was the only intervention that substantially increased the number and breadth of objectives (M = 12 objectives in M = 5.3 categories). With the help of our survey, participants generated between 30 and 38 distinct objectives for each decision case. Between five and nine participants were sufficient to generate these; more participants did not contribute new objectives. Most decision makers need help generating their objectives; combining simple brainstorming with a master list is a straightforward improvement that does not require a facilitator. An online process is promising for involving a large group of stakeholders.

Examining the “reading the mind in the eyes test” as an assessment of subtle differences in affective theory of mind after concussion

Objective: This research examined affective theory of mind (ToM) differences between university students with and without a history of concussion using the revised Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). Although, previous studies have shown that affective ToM is subserved by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex – a region that is vulnerable in head injury – few have examined whether subtle deficits in affective ToM are evident after concussion. Given the RMET’s sensitivity to affective deficits following moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury, the current study examined its validity following concussion and its correlation with related ToM measures and constructs, such as empathy.Method: Seventy-seven students with and without a history of self-reported concussion completed the RMET, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a novel Perspective-Taking Task, and the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy. Indices of spelling/reading capabilities were obtained and baseline electrodermal activation was recorded as an index of arousal.Results: RMET performance did not differ between individuals with and without a prior concussion when controlling for sex and spelling/reading skills and was not correlated with other measures of affective ToM, empathy, and arousal. However, spelling/reading skills were found to be a predictor of RMET performance among both concussion and no-concussion groups.Conclusions: Together, these findings imply that the RMET is not sensitive to ToM impairments after concussion and may be related to language skills among neurotypical students.

Egocentric biases and atypical generosity in autistic individuals.

Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) often experience difficulty and confusion in acknowledging others' perspectives and arguably exhibit egocentricity. However, whether this egocentricity necessarily results in selfish behavior during social situations remains a matter of debate. To study this relationship, we used computerized visuospatial perspective-taking task (VPT) and social-discounting task (SDT), derived from cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, and examined egocentric and other-oriented judgments in participants with ASCs (mean age 29.0 ± 4.2 years) and a group of matched typically developing (TD) controls (30.8 ± 8.5). The response time in VPT showed altered perspective-taking in the ASCs group compared with the TD group that involved in enhanced self-other intrusion and condition-insensitive response. Regardless of self/other perspective judgments, responses were relatively slower and consistent in duration in the ASCs group compared with the TD group. Social discounting was attenuated rather than steep discounting in the ASCs group. Their discounting was comparatively more consistent, irrespective of the task condition (i.e., self-other closeness-level). In effect, ASCs group exhibited more generous decisions than the TD group in this task. Finally, those with more egocentric perspective intrusion in VPT paradoxically showed more generous behaviors in SDT in the ASCs group. Our findings suggest that having ASCs does not always exhibit selfish behavior during interpersonal communication. Reduced flexibility in distinguishing self/other perspective and shifting decision-rules might account for this unique relationship between egocentricity and apparently generous behaviors. These results extend the recent suggestion that more careful attention should be paid to the idea of egocentricity in individuals with ASCs. Autism Res 2019. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: We aimed to examine whether seeing the world from another person's point of view and being generous toward other people are related in autistic and nonautistic people. We used a visual perspective-taking task and a social task in which individuals made decisions about how to divide a sum of money with others. Our results suggest that being autistic does not always make someone bad at seeing the world from another's viewpoint, and that autistic people may make fairer social decisions toward unfamiliar people because of lower bias.

Changing views: the effect of explicit perception-focus instructions on perspective-taking

ABSTRACTIn two experiments, we examined whether explicit attention to another’s perspective fosters perspective-taking. In the first experiment, we attempted to replicate previous findings showing that a mind-set focusing on self-other differences incites speakers to adopt another’s viewpoint in a subsequent task. However, our results showed that speakers focusing on self-other differences were just as likely to describe an object’s location from their egocentric perspective as speakers focusing on self-other similarities. In the second experiment, we intensified speakers’ awareness of perspectives by explicitly instructing them to regard their own (self-focus) or another’s (other-focus) viewpoint during the perspective-taking task. Participants allocated to the baseline did not receive explicit focus instructions. Findings revealed that other-focused speakers were more likely to adopt another’s perspective than self-focused speakers. However, compared to the baseline, an explicit other-focus did not foster perspective-taking. We conclude that an explicit awareness of perspective differences does not attenuate speakers’ egocentricity bias.

Social Abilities and Visual-Spatial Perspective-Taking Skill: Deaf Signers and Hearing Nonsigners.

Social abilities relate to performance on visual-spatial perspective-taking (VSPT) tasks for hearing nonsigners but may relate differently to VSPT abilities for deaf signers because of their distinct linguistic and social experiences. This research investigated whether deaf adults approach VSPT tasks nonsocially (as previously suggested for deaf children) or socially (as seen for hearing adults). Adult hearing nonsigners (n = 45) and deaf signers (n = 44) performed a nonlinguistic VSPT task, mental rotation and spatial orientation tasks, and completed a questionnaire measuring social abilities and degree of socialness. No group differences were observed for any of the spatial tasks. Hearing nonsigners with better social abilities performed better on the VSPT task but deaf signers who were less social performed better on the VSPT task. Therefore, social abilities and VSPT skill relate differently for deaf and hearing individuals, possibly due to differences in communication modality and/or sociocultural experiences.

Spatial perspective taking: Effects of social, directional, and interactive cues.

Including an avatar in the array in a spatial perspective-taking test improves performance, but it is not clear why. Different aspects of an avatar, including its directional nature, its agency (perceived ability for action), and its interactivity, may all influence perspective-taking performance. Experiment 1 examined how performance was influenced by a social directional cue (an avatar) and an abstract directional cue (an arrow). Participants performed best in the avatar condition and no better in the arrow condition than in a control condition. These results suggest that directionality of the cue alone is not sufficient to facilitate performance on this task. Experiment 2 compared an avatar to a concrete directional cue that was grounded in everyday experience interacting with objects, but was non-agentive (a chair). There was no significant difference between the avatar and the chair conditions, which both outperformed the control condition. Participants in both experiments and all conditions primarily reported utilizing mental simulation strategies that involved imagining themselves in the array of objects. The results suggest that grounding the task in everyday interactions with people or objects facilitates this mental simulation process and more generally enhances performance on perspective-taking tasks.

Flexible egocentricity: Asymmetric switch costs on a perspective-taking task.

We gave 40 participants a task in which they needed to select target objects from an array according to the instructions of either an informed director (who shared their perspective of the array) or an ignorant director (whose view of the array was restricted due to barriers). Importantly, sometimes only one of the directors was visible, and on some trials when both directors were present, participants were required to switch between perspectives. We found that participants were faster to select items from the informed director's perspective than the ignorant director's perspective, but that they slowed when there was a visible but inactive second director. Crucially, relative to nonswitch trials where the same perspective was taken twice consecutively, participants exhibited a significant cost of switching between perspectives when returning to take their own perspective, but not when switching to the other point of view. We interpret these results as evidence that participants inhibit their more salient perspective in order to adopt another's, and then incur an asymmetric switch cost as a result. This suggests that although we are egocentric by default, our egocentricity is effectively, albeit temporarily, eliminated if we have just adopted an alternative frame of reference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Egocentrism in sub-clinical depression

ABSTRACTDepression 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.