Visual Perspective-taking Task Research Articles

Altercentrism in perspective-taking: The role of humanisation in embodying the agent's point of view.

We investigated the role of humanisation in Visual Perspective-Taking (VPT) by testing whether and how agent's human-likeness and attractiveness ("hedonic quality") interact with social cues (action and eye gaze) in influencing the participants' disposition to embody another's perspective. In a VPT task, participants viewed scenes displaying an actor (human or robotic) grasping, gazing (or both) a target object, or adopting a still posture, and were required to judge the left/right location of the target, without receiving any instruction on the perspective to be assumed. Across two studies, we selected human and robotic agents to use as actors in the VPT task. Results consistently demonstrated that participants could be effectively clustered by a data-driven method into two perspective-taking styles, depending on the presence of a systematic tendency to locate the target object in the VPT scenarios from own (egocentric) or the actor's (altercentric) point of view. The human versus nonhuman nature of the agent seemed able to affect the participants' egocentric or altercentric tendency whereas both the agent's hedonic quality and social cues were not able to influence this propensity. Identifying the factors influencing altercentrism during human-robot interactions can be essential for developing artificial agents favouring user's acceptance and willingness to interact. In this respect, considering differences among individuals in their propensity to take another's point of view may be of central importance. Clustering approaches can represent a useful means to capture interindividual differences in this central aspect of human social cognition.

The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex promotes self-control by inhibiting the egocentric perspective

The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) plays a crucial role in social cognitive functions, including perspective-taking. Although perspective-taking has been linked to self-control, the mechanism by which the dmPFC might facilitate self-control remains unclear. Using the multimodal neuroimaging dataset from the Human Connectome Project (Study 1, N =978 adults), we established a reliable association between the dmPFC and self-control, as measured by discounting rate—the tendency to prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones. Experiments (Study 2, N = 36 adults) involving high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation showed that anodal stimulation of the dmPFC reduces the discounting of delayed rewards and decreases the congruency effect in egocentric but not allocentric perspective in the visual perspective-taking tasks. These findings suggest that the dmPFC promotes self-control by inhibiting the egocentric perspective, offering new insights into the neural underpinnings of self-control and perspective-taking, and opening new avenues for interventions targeting disorders characterized by impaired self-regulation.

Embodied Cross-Modal Interactions Based on an Altercentric Reference Frame.

Accurate comprehension of others' thoughts and intentions is crucial for smooth social interactions, wherein understanding their perceptual experiences serves as a fundamental basis for this high-level social cognition. However, previous research has predominantly focused on the visual modality when investigating perceptual processing from others' perspectives, leaving the exploration of multisensory inputs during this process largely unexplored. By incorporating auditory stimuli into visual perspective-taking (VPT) tasks, we have designed a novel experimental paradigm in which the spatial correspondence between visual and auditory stimuli was limited to the altercentric rather than the egocentric reference frame. Overall, we found that when individuals engaged in explicit or implicit VPT to process visual stimuli from an avatar's viewpoint, the concomitantly presented auditory stimuli were also processed within this avatar-centered reference frame, revealing altercentric cross-modal interactions.

Agent-Object Relationships in Level-2 Visual Perspective Taking: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Visual perspective taking (VPT) generates a shared frame of reference for understanding how the world appears to others. Whilst greater cognitive and neurophysiological demands are associated with increasing angular distance between the self and other is well documented, accompanying attentional characteristics are not currently understood. Furthermore, although age and group status have been shown to impact task performance, other important cues, such as the relationship between agents and objects, have not been manipulated. Therefore, 35 university students participated in an eye-tracking experiment where they completed a VPT task with agents positioned at a low or high angular disparity (45° or 135° respectively). The congruence between the age of the agent (child vs adult) and the object they are attending to (e.g., teddy-bear vs kettle) was also manipulated. Participants were required to respond to the direction of the object from the agent's position. The findings reveal more fixations and increased dwell-times on agents compared to objects, but this was moderated by the age of the task agent. Results also showed more attentional transitions between agents and objects at higher angular disparities. These results converge with behavioural and neurophysiological descriptions of task performance in previous studies. Furthermore, the congruency of the relationship between agents and objects also impacted attention shifting and response times, highlighting the importance of understanding how social cues and contexts can modulate VPT processes in everyday contexts and social interaction.

Recursive structures modulate the electrophysiological correlates of visual perspective taking.

An increasing number of studies have focused on the neural basis of complex mental inferences, which requires an understanding of the recursive nature of thought; however, the precise electrophysiological response to a recursive structure remains unclear. The present event-related potential (ERP) study investigated the recursive structure effect on the neural correlates of visual perspective taking by modifying a third-person visual perspective-taking task. Participants were required to determine how many dots in the presented scenes could be seen from the cued perspective, including the perspectives in the self, other, and recursive (one avatar's belief of another avatar) conditions. The ERP results showed that the N100 and P200 components specific to the recursive-perspective condition showed greater attentional allocation; the N200 component increased in the recursive condition and was related to the conflict process; and larger late slow waves were found in the other- and recursive-perspective conditions compared with those in the self-perspective condition, which reflected the decoupling mechanism. The results suggested that high-order perspective taking requires more attentional resources and conflict processing for further decoupling from the self-perspective.

Maternal storytelling and reminiscing styles in relation to preschoolers’ perspective-taking abilities

This study investigated mothers’ narrative styles across storytelling and reminiscing contexts in relation to preschoolers’ visual, socio-cognitive, and syntactic perspective-taking (PT) abilities. The sample consisted of 120 Turkish mothers and their 3- to 5-year-old children. Mother-child dyads were asked to retell a storybook and to reminisce about an event they experienced in the lab. Children’s visual PT, false belief understanding, syntactic PT, and vocabulary were assessed. The results indicated that mothers showed distinct narrative scaffolding styles in each context (storytelling: storyteller and story builder; reminiscing: elicitor, constructor, co-teller). Maternal storytelling styles, but not reminiscing styles were related to children’s age. Children of storytellers performed better in syntactic and visual PT tasks than children of story builders, and children of memory elicitors scored higher in visual PT tasks than children of co-tellers. The implications of these findings are discussed within our understanding of how mother-child discourse affects children’s socio-cognitive development.

Spontaneous perspective-taking and its relation to schizotypy

ABSTRACT Introduction Patients with schizophrenia differ from healthy controls in the extent that they spontaneously take another’s perspective. For such effects, it is difficult to separate the influence of schizophrenia from multiple potential confounders. Here, for the first time, associations between spontaneous perspective-taking and schizotypy were investigated in a nonclinical population. Methods Adult participants completed both a Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ-BRU) and a novel online adaptation of a visual perspective-taking task that required participants to make judgements both from their own perspective and that of a human avatar. Results Response times were elevated when the avatar’s perspective was inconsistent with that of the participant, providing evidence of spontaneous perspective-taking. This demonstrates that the visual perspective-taking task can be successfully implemented in an online format. However, schizotypy did not predict these spontaneous perspective-taking effects. Conclusions Unlike explicit mentalising, this form of implicit mentalising is not affected by nonclinical manifestations of schizotypy traits. This implies that impairment of general neurocognitive function contributes to altered spontaneous perspective-taking in schizophrenia. A novel account based on the cognitive control processes involved in perspective selection and the role of attention in perspective calculation reconciles apparently contradictory findings of earlier studies comparing patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls.

Visual perspective-taking in complex natural scenes.

Studies of visual perspective-taking have shown that adults can rapidly and accurately compute their own and other peoples’ viewpoints, but they experience difficulties when the two perspectives are inconsistent. We tested whether these egocentric (i.e., interference from one’s own perspective) and altercentric biases (i.e., interference from another person’s perspective) persist in ecologically valid complex environments. Participants (N = 150) completed a dot-probe visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in natural scenes containing real people, first only according to their own perspective and then judging both their own and another person’s perspective. Results showed that the other person’s perspective did not disrupt self perspective-taking judgements when the other perspective was not explicitly prompted. In contrast, egocentric and altercentric biases were found when participants were prompted to switch between self and other perspectives. These findings suggest that altercentric visual perspective-taking can be activated spontaneously in complex real-world contexts, but is subject to both top-down and bottom-up influences, including explicit prompts or salient visual stimuli.

Greater reliance on proprioceptive information during a reaching task with perspective manipulation among children with autism spectrum disorders

Difficulties with visual perspective-taking among individuals with autism spectrum disorders remain poorly understood. Many studies have presumed that first-person visual input can be mentally transformed to a third-person perspective during visual perspective-taking tasks; however, existing research has not fully revealed the computational strategy used by those with autism spectrum disorders for taking another person’s perspective. In this study, we designed a novel approach to test a strategy using the opposite-directional effect among children with autism spectrum disorders. This effect refers to how a third-person perspective as a visual input alters a cognitive process. We directly manipulated participants’ visual perspective by placing a camera at different positions; participants could watch themselves from a third-person perspective during a reaching task with no endpoint feedback. During a baseline task, endpoint bias (with endpoint feedback but no visual transformation) did not differ significantly between groups. However, the endpoint was affected by extrinsic coordinate information in the control group relative to the autism spectrum disorders group when the visual perspective was transformed. These results indicate an increased reliance on proprioception during the reaching task with perspective manipulation in the autism spectrum disorders group.

How Much of Me Do I See in Other Minds? Modulating Egocentricity in Emotion Judgments by tDCS.

When inferring the mental states of others, individuals’ judgments are influenced by their own state of mind, an effect often referred to as egocentricity. Self–other differentiation is key for an accurate interpretation of other’s mental states, especially when these differ from one’s own states. It has been suggested that the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) is causally involved in overcoming egocentricity in the affective domain. In a double-blind randomized study, 47 healthy adults received anodal (1 mA, 20 min) or sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the rSMG prior to performing a newly developed paradigm, the self–other facial emotion judgment (SOFE) task. In this task, participants made judgments of facial emotional expressions while having been previously confronted with congruent or incongruent emotion-inducing situations. To differentiate between emotional and cognitive egocentricity, participants additionally completed an established visual perspective-taking task. Our results confirmed the occurrence of emotional egocentric biases during the SOFE task. No conclusive evidence of a general role of the rSMG in emotional egocentricity was found. However, active as compared to sham tDCS induced descriptively lower egocentric biases when judging incongruent fearful faces, and stronger biases when judging incongruent happy faces, suggesting emotion-specific tDCS effects on egocentric biases. Further, we found significant tDCS effects on cognitive egocentricity. Results of the present study expanded our understanding of emotional egocentricity and point towards emotion-specific patterns of the underlying functionality.

Tracking multiple perspectives: Spontaneous computation of what individuals in high entitative groups see.

Perspective-taking ability is crucial for supporting social interactions. It has been widely suggested that the calculation of an individual's perspective is spontaneous. Nevertheless, people typically engage with more than one individual, and computing what individuals in a crowd see is important. The current study explored whether people spontaneously compute the perspectives of individuals displayed in a crowd. The classic visual perspective-taking task was adopted, but the picture of the room was presented with four human avatars facing two walls. The results showed that if the crowd of individuals was treated as a high entitative group, when none of the perspectives of the individuals contained the same number of discs as that from the perspective of the participant, the judgment of the participant's perspective was slower than when a proportion of the perspectives of the individuals displayed in the crowd were consistent with the participant's perspective, even if the perspectives of the multiple individuals in a crowd were not explicitly noticed. This altercentric intrusion effect was not present when the crowd had low entitativity. These findings were replicated by using different methods to operationalize group entitativity. Hence, this study demonstrates that spontaneously tracking the perspectives of individuals displayed in a crowd has a boundary condition and that people can spontaneously compute what individuals in high entitative groups see.

Automatic imitation is reduced in narcissists but only in egocentric perspective-takers

Narcissism is a prevalent personality trait associated with low concern for others and high self-focus. Congruently, reduced automatic imitation in narcissists was reported in one study (23 participants), but it was not replicated in another (57 participants). In this study, 100 participants completed the previously used narcissism and automatic imitation measures but here along with a visual perspective-taking task allowing to dissociate 4 profiles of perspective-takers. While we confirmed a non-replication at whole-sample level, we did find a reliable negative association between narcissism and automatic imitation among egocentric perspective-takers, that is, characterized as highly self-centered when tasked to adopt someone else's point of view. Our findings shed a new light on whether narcissistic individuals are less sensitive to others, highlight the importance of considering performance-based individual differences within the narcissistic personality, and revisit the recent claim that automatic imitation poorly relates to social functioning by presenting a theoretical framework that questions the sensitivity of the automatic imitation task.

Lack of implicit visual perspective taking in adult males with autism spectrum disorders

BackgroundSome theorists have suggested that the ability of visual perspective-taking (VPT) constitutes a rudimentary process of social cognition, and as such, the ability of VPT in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been the focus of intensive research. AimThe present study investigated whether adult males with ASD show signs of implicit VPT in first-level VPT tasks, in which participants were required to judge whether a target object can be seen from another’s perspective, even when they are not explicitly required to take another’s perspective. Methods and proceduresWe examined whether the information from another’s visual perspective interferes with visual processing from the participant’s own perspective (“altercentric interference”) using the reaction time as the main performance indicator in adult males with or without ASD. Eye movement patterns during VPT were analyzed for some participants. Outcomes and resultsThe results revealed signs of altercentric interference in neurotypical adults, but not in adult males with ASD. Conclusions and implicationsThe results indicate the possibility that people with ASD may rely on a different strategy than neurotypical adults in completing a first-level VPT task.

Executive Functions do not Underlie Performance on the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT) in Healthy Younger and Older Adults.

Current measures of social cognition have shown inconsistent findings regarding the effects of executive function (EF) abilities on social cognitive performance in older adults. The psychometric properties of the different social cognition tests may underlie the disproportional overlap with EF abilities. Our aim was to examine the relationship between social cognition and EF abilities using the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT; Baksh, R.A., Abrahams, S., Auyeung, B., & MacPherson, S.E. (2018). The Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT): Examining the effects of age on a new measure of theory of mind and social norm understanding. PloS One, 13(4), e0195818.), a test assessing four different aspects of social cognition: cognitive theory of mind (ToM), affective ToM, interpersonal understanding of social norms, and intrapersonal understanding of social norms. We administered the ESCoT, EF measures of inhibition, set shifting, updating, and a measure of processing speed to 30 younger and 31 older adults. We also administered the Visual Perspective Taking task (VPT) as a ToM test thought to be reliant on EF abilities. Better performance on cognitive ToM was significantly associated with younger age and slower processing speed. Better performance on affective ToM and ESCoT total score was associated with being younger and female. Better performance on interpersonal understanding of social norms was associated with being younger. EF abilities did not predict performance on any subtest of the ESCoT. In contrast, on the VPT, the relationship between age group and performance was fully or partially mediated by processing speed and updating. These findings show that the ESCoT is a valuable measure of different aspects of social cognition and, unlike many established tests of social cognition, performance is not predicted by EF abilities.

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.

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.

Common and unique effects of HD-tDCS to the social brain across cultural groups

Cultural background influences social cognition, however no study has examined brain stimulation differences attributable to cultural background. 104 young adults [52 South-East Asian Singaporeans (SEA); 52 Caucasian Australians (CA)] received anodal high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) to the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) or the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ). Participants completed tasks with varying demands on self-other processing including visual perspective taking (VPT)and episodic memory with self and other encoding. At baseline, SEA showed greater self-other integration than CA in the level one (line-of-sight) VPT task as indexed by greater interference from the alternate perspective. Anodal HD-tDCS to the dmPFC resulted in the CA performing closer to the SEA during egocentric perspective judgements. Baseline performance on level two (embodied rotation) VPT task and the self-reference effect (SRE) in episodic memory was comparable between the two groups. In the combined sample, HD-tDCS to the rTPJ decreased the interference from the egocentric perspective during level two VPT and dmPFC HD-tDCS removed the SRE in episodic memory. Stimulation effects were comparable when baseline performance was comparable. When baseline performance differed, stimulation differences were identified. Therefore, social cognitive differences due to cultural background are an important consideration in social brain stimulation studies.

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.

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.