Dissociating processes underlying level-1 visual perspective taking in adults

Abstract

Although reasoning about other people's mental states has typically been thought to require effortful deliberation, evidence from indirect measures suggests that people may implicitly track others' perspectives, spontaneously calculating what they see and know. We used a process-dissociation approach to investigate the unique contributions of automatic and controlled processes to level-1 visual perspective taking in adults. In Experiment 1, imposing time pressure reduced the ability to exert control over one's responses, but it left automatic processing of a target's perspective unchanged. In Experiment 2, automatic processing of a target's perspective was greater when the target was a human avatar versus a non-social entity, whereas controlled processing was relatively unaffected by the specific target. Our findings highlight the utility of a process-dissociation approach for increasing theoretical precision and generating new questions about the nature of perspective taking.

Time pressure disrupts level-2, but not level-1, visual perspective calculation: A process-dissociation analysis

“…More important, however, a PDP re-analysis of Qureshi et al's (2010) data further revealed that performing the secondary task reduced self-perspective detection, but it had no effect on the focal process of avatar-perspective calculation (Qureshi & Monk, 2018), again suggesting that perspective calculation may operate efficiently in L1-VPT. Of most relevance to the current work, Todd et al (2017), using the same L1-VPT task as Qureshi et al (2010), found that imposing time pressure with a response-deadline manipulation-the same one used in the experiments reported here-reduced self-perspective detection but had no effect on avatar-perspective calculation, which once again points to the efficiency of the perspective-calculation process in L1-VPT.…”

“…Indeed, variants of the PDP have been used to estimate processes underlying task behavior in a diversity of content areas, including attitude formation (Hütter, Sweldens, Stahl, Unkelbach, & Klauer, 2012), attributional inference (McCarthy & Skowronski, 2011), decision-making under uncertainty (Ferreira, Garcia-Marques, Sherman, & Sherman, 2006), empathy for pain (Cameron, Spring, & Todd, 2017), moral judgment (Cameron, Payne, Sinnott-Armstrong, Scheffer, & Inzlicht, 2017;Conway & Gawronski, 2013), and racial stereotyping (Krieglmeyer & Sherman, 2012;Payne, 2001). More germane to the current work, the PDP has also been used to elucidate processes underlying altercentric-interference effects in visual perspective taking (Todd, Cameron, & Simpson, 2017).…”

“…2 Todd et al (2017) used the labels "controlled" processing and "automatic" processing, respectively, for these same process parameters. Such labels are problematic because they conflate operating principles, or definitions of what each process is doing (i.e., "detecting" one's own perspective, "calculating" the avatar's perspective), with operating conditions, or empirical claims about when each process operates (e.g., Does the process of calculating the avatar's perspective operate when processing opportunity is limited?).…”

“…Following Todd et al (2017), we suggest that avatar-perspective calculation is the parameter of focal interest in research that treats altercentric interference as a proxy for "implicit mentalizing" in indirect measures of visual perspective taking (see also Qureshi & Monk, 2018). Todd et al (2017) recently validated the meaning of this process parameter by demonstrating that it is sensitive to whether the entity in the room is actually capable of seeing. Specifically, they found that perspective calculation was stronger when the entity in the room had agency (i.e., a human avatar) than when the entity did not have agency (i.e., a dual-colored block).…”

The biocultural emergence of mindreading: integrating cognitive archaeology and human development

“…This capacity is akin to that manifested by infants in SRFBTs and is also importantly limited (Surtees and Apperly 2012;Surtees et al 2011Surtees et al , 2016Todd et al 2017; see also Low and Watts 2013;Rakoczy et al 2015, for evidence of important limitations in infants; and Carruthers 2016, pp. 150-151; Rakoczy 2017 for further discussion).…”