Perspective-taking is spontaneous but not automatic

Unintentional perspective-taking calculates whether something is seen, but not how it is seen.

A long established distinction exists in developmental psychology between young children's ability to judge whether objects are seen by another, known as "level-1" perspective-taking, and judging how the other sees those objects, known as "level-2" perspective-taking (Flavell, Everett, Croft, & Flavell, 1981a; Flavell, Flavell, Green, & Wilcox, 1981b). Samson, Apperly, Braithwaite, Andrews, and...

Taking Turing Seriously (but Not Literally)

Recent results from present-day instantiations of the Turing test, most notably the annual Loebner Prize competition, have fueled the perception that the test has either already been passed or that it soon will be. With this perception comes the implication that computers are on the verge of achieving human-level cognition. We argue that the perspective on the Turing test is flawed because it l...

Differential involvement of the posterior temporal cortex in mentalizing but not perspective taking.

Understanding and predicting other people's mental states and behavior are important prerequisites for social interactions. The capacity to attribute mental states such as desires, thoughts or intentions to oneself or others is referred to as mentalizing. The right posterior temporal cortex at the temporal-parietal junction has been associated with mentalizing but also with taking someone else'...

Spontaneous movements during a spatial perspective-taking task

In Search of Triggering Conditions for Spontaneous Visual Perspective Taking

Visual perspective taking (VPT) – people’s ability to represent the physical world from another person’s viewpoint – plays a fundamental role in social cognition. However, little is known about whether and when VPT can be triggered spontaneously without any explicit verbal prompting. In six studies, we measured spontaneous VPT as the tendency to read an ambiguous number from another agent’s ima...