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Running Head: Visuo-spatial Perspective Taking Agency Attribution and Visuo-spatial Perspective Taking
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Zwickel, Jan |
| Copyright Year | 2009 |
| Abstract | We tested whether processes that evoke agency interpretations and mental state attributions also lead to adoption of the actor’s visuo-spatial perspective in the observer. Agency and mental state interpretations were manipulated by showing different film clips involving two triangles (the Frith-Happé animations). Participants made speeded spatial decisions while watching these films. The response to the spatial task could be either the same or different when given from the perspective of the participant versus the perspective of one of the triangles. Reaction times were longer when the perspectives of participants and triangles differed compared to when they were the same. This effect increased as the need to invoke agency interpretations for film understanding increased and in those films that have previously been shown to evoke mental state attributions. This demonstrates that processing of an agent’s behavior co-occurs with perspective adoption, even in the case of triangles as actors. Mind Attribution and Visuo-Spatial Perspective Taking, R537B 3 Agency Attribution and Visuo-Spatial Perspective Taking A crucial part of human life involves social interactions. To react adequately in these situations it is important to take the representation about the world of the interacting partner into account, for example, to understand what further information would be needed in a conversation, or to predict actions based on the assumed state of the other. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that people are generally willing to represent the situation of others (Frith & Frith, 2006) and do so even if this involves representing painful stimulation (Jackson, Meltzoff, & Decety, 2005). The ability to correctly represent what someone else knows requires that the visuo-spatial perspective (VSP) of the other is taken into account to understand what the other can or cannot know (Aichhorn, Perner, Kronbichler, Staffen, & Ladurner, 2006). This can then be used as a starting state to predict how the other person feels or will act (Apperly, 2008). That VSP-taking occurs spontaneously (independent of task requirements) in the presence of humans has been shown by Tversky and Hard (2009). Tversky and colleagues asked participants to describe the spatial relationship of two objects in a picture (“in relation to the bottle, where is the book?”). In one experimental condition, a human was seated behind the two objects and faced the observer. Therefore, the book was to the right of the bottle from the observer’s perspective but to the left of the bottle seen from the perspective of the depicted person. One picture was taken while the male actor was reaching for the book, another picture when the actor was looking at the book but not reaching. The last picture showed the same situation without a human. When the pictures contained a human, observers often spontaneously described the location of the book from the view of the depicted person. This tendency was further increased when the word “placed” was added to the question (“in relation to the bottle, where is the book placed?”) which according to the authors would draw attention to the action and thereby increase the effect. These results were interpreted as showing that participants spontaneously took the perspective of the depicted person to make sense of the situation. Another demonstration of VSP-taking in the presence of humans can be found in the Mind Attribution and Visuo-Spatial Perspective Taking, R537B 4 study of Thomas, Press, and Haggard (2006). In the experiment, participants faced either a human model or an object (a house). Participants’ task was to report a tactile cue that could either be in an anatomically same or different position with respect to a visual cue presented at the human model or object. For example, a tactile cue to the participant’s right arm could follow a visual cue at the model’s right arm (anatomical same) or at the model’s left arm (same side, seen from the participant’s perspective). In the human model condition, participants were faster for anatomically same than different tactile-visual conditions demonstrating that the perspective of the model played a role when coding the visual stimuli. No difference between same and different situations was found in the object condition. One important difference between this and the current study was that only the current study did involve movements. We expected that objects that display movement patterns that lead to the attribution of agency (Johnson, 2003) would also lead to VSP-taking. These reported studies show that VSP-taking occurs spontaneously in the presence of a human but it is unclear whether this is caused by the presence of a human body as Thomas et al. suggested or because the presence of a human is taken as a cue for the presence of an agent which then causes VSP-taking. The increase in VSP-taking when attention was drawn to the action in Tversky et al. suggests the latter because human actions can be interpreted as cues of agency. The current study should shed light on this question. If VSP-taking occurs even if only non-human entities are present as long as these entities seem to be agents it would support the interpretation that VSP-taking in the above studies did not occur because of the presence of a human but because the picture of the human acted as a cue to the presence of an agent. According to this reasoning, detecting an agent co-occurs with VSP-taking. We tested in Experiment 1 whether processes that invoke the interpretation of agency, would also lead to VSP-taking when no visual features of humans are present. To this end we showed short film clips to the participants. These films were taken from the Frith-Happé animations and depict a red and blue triangle moving in a self-propelled fashion across the screen (Abell, Happe, & Frith, 2000). It has been shown before that these films activate agency and theory of mind (ToM, see below) processes to a different degree (e.g., Abell et al., 2000; Mind Attribution and Visuo-Spatial Perspective Taking, R537B 5 Castelli, Happé, Frith, & Frith, 2000; Klein, Zwickel, Prinz, & Frith, 2009). Each film belongs to one of three categories: The films “billiard”, “drifting”, and “tennis” belong to the random (R) category. They contain no interaction between the triangles. For example, in “tennis” the triangles are bouncing back and forth in a rather uncoordinated way. According to typical descriptions of participants, the triangles are floating around without purpose. Triangles in films of the goal-directed (GD) category respond to physical events of each other, e.g., follow each other continuously (chasing), or with stops in-between (leading), or move around each other in a symmetric way (dancing). The movement of the triangles in these films could be described as fulfilling a certain goal (“the triangles danced around each other”) but it was not necessary to attribute a specific mental state to the triangles (“one triangle wanted to dance with the other”). Importantly, only films from the ToM category typically lead to descriptions according to which the triangles react to each other’s underlying mental states. One description of the ToM film “mocking” could be that the small triangle is mocking the big triangle behind it’s back, but when the big triangle turns and therefore can see the small one, the small one pretends to do something else. A description of “coaxing” could be that the big triangle is pushing the small triangle, which wants to stay inside, outside the house. Finally, the big triangle manages to move the small one outside. Snapshots of the film “surprising” are depicted in Figure 1. Understanding of ToM animations therefore required some attribution of mental states to the triangles. -Figure 1 about here – VSP-taking was expected to occur during films from the GD category because the two triangles are perceived as agents. If the attribution of mental states would further increase the tendency of VSP-taking then this should result in larger effects during films of the ToM than GD category. VSP-taking was measured by asking participants to respond to dots occurring right or left of the red triangle with right and left key presses respectively. In the following, "right" and "left" always refer to the observer’s perspective, which was also how participants Mind Attribution and Visuo-Spatial Perspective Taking, R537B 6 were instructed to respond. These dots occurred either while the red triangle’s tip was pointing upward or downward. If it was pointing upward, the triangle can be said to have a spatial orientation that matches the orientation of the participant. In this case, right and left decisions are the same, whether or not participants adopt and respond relative to the spatial orientation of the triangle or their own. However, when the triangle is facing-down it may create interference because if the perspective of the triangle is taken the response is incongruent to the response from the participant’s perspective (see Figure 2). If agency/mental state attribution co-occurs with a stronger tendency of VSP-taking, responses during downward pointing directions in GD/ToM films should lead to more interference. This interference in turn should be reflected in longer reaction times (RTs). -Figure 2 about here -- |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.psy.lmu.de/exp/people/former/zwickel/publications/zwickel_pbr.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
