Submentalizing or mentalizing in a Level 1 perspective-taking task: A cloak and goggles test.

Abstract

It has been proposed that humans possess an automatic system to represent mental states (‘implicit mentalizing’). The existence of an implicit mentalizing system has generated considerable debate however, centered on the ability of various experimental paradigms to demonstrate unambiguously such mentalizing. Evidence for implicit mentalizing has previously been provided by the ‘dot perspective task,’ where participants are slower to verify the number of dots they can see when an avatar can see a different number of dots. However, recent evidence challenged a mentalizing interpretation of this effect by showing it was unaltered when the avatar was replaced with an inanimate arrow stimulus. Here we present an extension of the dot perspective task using an invisibility cloaking device to render the dots invisible on certain trials. This paradigm is capable of providing unambiguous evidence of automatic mentalizing, but no such evidence was found. Two further well-powered experiments used opaque and transparent goggles to manipulate visibility but found no evidence of automatic mentalizing, nor of individual differences in empathy or perspective-taking predicting performance, contradicting previous studies using the same design. The results cast doubt on the existence of an implicit mentalizing system, suggesting that previous effects were due to domain-general processes.

Perceptual sensitivity is modulated by what others can see

“…Our findings cannot be ascribed to decisional or response interference because a change in performance was only observed on Gabor-present Bself^trials (Bhits^), and response times did not mirror the effect of congruency on sensitivity. Indeed, in Experiment 3, response times were significantly speeded by congruent perspectives in both seeing and nonseeing conditions (thus tracking the low-level directional features of the avatar, consistent with recent findings; Cole, Atkinson, Le, & Smith, 2016;Conway, Lee, Ojaghi, Catmur, & Bird, 2017), whereas a boost in perceptual sensitivity was only observed in the seeing condition. Taken together, our findings suggest the avatar's viewpoint modulates early perceptual processing, thereby potentiating perception of stimuli for which others are also able to see and act upon (Otten, Seth, & Pinto, 2017;Teufel, Fletcher, & Davis, 2010).…”

“…We think this is less likely, given that in all conditions, the participant was not able to see the avatar's eyes, and was instead required to track (via the presence of the blindfold) whether they are in a seeing or nonseeing condition. To rule out bottom-up effects of the blindfold, future experiments could employ a belief induction manipulation in which the avatar wears either Bseeing^or Bnonseeingĉ oloured goggles (Conway et al, 2017). This ensures that the visual features of the avatars remain similar allowing changes in sensitivity to be directly attributed to the participant's belief about whether the goggles allow seeing or not (Heyes, 2014).…”

“…However, in noninterleaved designs, participants may perform the task without explicitly attributing a Bperspective^to the avatar. Given the current controversy over the automaticity and social specificity of visual perspective-taking effects in decision-making (Cole et al, 2016;Conway et al, 2017;Furlanetto et al, 2016;Santiesteban et al, 2014), we defer this issue of the conditions that enable or disable such interference effects to future study. Instead, we make a more modest claim that when people are engaged in perspective taking (perhaps induced by interleaved trials), their perceptual sensitivity is altered on Bself^trials.…”

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

“…Finally, there is ongoing debate about whether altercentric-interference effects in L1-VPT capture processes that are specifically social in nature (i.e., the "mentalizing" interpretation) or whether they reflect domain-general processes, such as attentional cueing (i.e., the "submentalizing" interpretation; Heyes, 2014). Experiments designed to test between these accounts have produced mixed results, with some findings supporting the mentalizing interpretation (e.g., Baker, Levin, & Saylor, 2016;Bukowski, Hietanen, & Samson, 2015;Furlanetto, Becchio, Samson, & Apperly, 2016;Gardner, Bileviciute, & Edmonds, 2018;Michael et al, 2018;Nielsen, Slade, Levy, & Holmes, 2015) and other findings supporting the sub-mentalizing interpretation (e.g., Cole, Atkinson, Le, & Smith, 2016;Conway, Lee, Ojaghi, Catmur, & Bird, 2017;Gardner, Hull, Taylor, & Edmonds, 2018;Langton, 2018;Santiesteban, Catmur, Hopkins, Bird, & Heyes, 2014;Wilson, Soranzo, & Bertamini, 2017). Although we suggest the PDP framework can help isolate avatar-perspective calculation as the construct of focal interest in indirect measures of L1-VPT, prior work indicates that the constructs captured by PDP parameters reflect a combination of domain-general and domain-specific processes (e.g., Payne, 2001Payne, , 2005.…”

The Role of Perspective Taking on Attention: A Review of the Special Issue on the Reflexive Attentional Shift Phenomenon

“…Further research has focused on whether the perspective may not be a spontaneous phenomenon. If this is the case, then RAS would be only modulated by perceptual characteristics of the cue, while perspective taking would be due to top-down processes [18][19][20][21]. These authors noted that the human avatar employed by Samson et al [7] was unable to generate an attentional shift when the target discs were presented within 300 ms from the presentation of the cue.…”