The dot perspective task revisited: Evidence for directional effects

Humans are highly social creatures. Evidence from the dot perspective task suggests that humans automatically track the perspective of other individuals – a disposition that, if true, may help to facilitate social interaction. However, variants of the original dot perspective task suggest the alternative interpretation that the effect in the task is not due to perspective taking. Here, we present a new variant, using improved stimuli to address these issues. Our results replicate previous findings, across both animate and inanimate stimuli, and suggest that the effect is due to directional cueing rather than automatic perspective taking.