Perspective Taking

New insights into inter-individual differences in perspective taking

• Bukowski, Henryk, & Samson, Dana (2021). Automatic imitation is reduced in narcissists but only in egocentric perspective-takers. Acta Psychologica, 213, 103235. doi :10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103235

• Bukowski, Henryk, & Samson, Dana (2017). New Insights into the Inter-Individual Variability in Perspective Taking. Vision, 1, 8. doi :10.3390/vision1010008

Neural markers of visual perspective taking

• Beck, Alexy Assaf, Rossion, Bruno, & Samson, Dana (2018). An objective neural signature of rapid perspective taking. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13, 72-79. doi :10.1093/scan/nsx135

• Ramsey, Richard, Hansen, Peter, Apperly, Ian, & Samson, Dana (2013). Seeing it my way or your way : frontoparietal brain areas sustain viewpoint-independent perspective selection processes. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25, 670-684. doi :10.1162/jocn_a_00345

• Schurz, Matthias, Kronbichler, Martin, Weissengruber, Sebastian, Surtees, Andrew David, Samson, Dana, & Perner, Josef (2015). Clarifying the role of theory of mind areas during visual perspective taking: Issues of spontaneity and domain-specificity. NeuroImage, 117, 386-396. doi :10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.04.031

Factors influencing perspective taking

• Deliens, Gaétane, Bukowski, Henryk, Slama, Hichem, Surtees, Andrew, Cleeremans, Axel, Samson, Dana, & Peigneux, Philippe (2018). The impact of sleep deprivation on visual perspective taking. Journal of Sleep Research, 27, 175-183. doi :10.1111/jsr.12595

• Bukowski, Henryk, & Samson, Dana (2016). Can emotions influence level-1 visual perspective taking?. Cognitive Neuroscience, 7(1-4), 182-191. doi :10.1080/17588928.2015.1043879

Do we "automatically" compute what or where someone else is looking at?

Automaticity is a complex construct in cognitive sciences which usually refers to processes that have the following main characteristics: (1) the processes are stimulus-driven, that is, the mere presence of a stimulus triggers the processing; (2) the processes are effortless, that is, they require little cognitive ressources and operate even under dual-task conditions; and (3) the processes are involuntary, that is they operate beyong our control. While there is evidence from both the visual perspective-taking (including our own study in JEP:HPP, 2010) and the gaze cueing literature that the computation of what or where someone else is looking is automatic in the sense that it is effortless and happens involuntarily, we showed that such computation is however not stimulus-driven. The mere presence of another person is not enough to engage in the computation of what or where that person is looking at. In a series of 3 experiments, we show the conditions that are necessary to trigger such computation. The full article can be found here.

• Samson, Dana, Apperly, Ian A., Braithwaite, Jason J., Andrews, Benjamin J., & Scott, Sarah E. Bodley (2010). Seeing it their way : evidence for rapid and involuntary computation of what other people see. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36(5), 1255-66. doi :10.1037/a0018729

• Bukowski, Henryk, Hietanen, Jari K., & Samson, Dana (2016). From gaze cueing to perspective taking: Revisiting the claim that we automatically compute where or what other people are looking at. Visual Cognition, 23(8), 1020-1042. doi :10.1080/13506285.2015.1132804

• Furlanetto, Tiziano, Becchio, Cristina, Samson, Dana, & Apperly, Ian (2015). Altercentric Interference in Level 1 Visual Perspective Taking Reflects the Ascription of Mental States, Not Submentalizing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 42(2), 158-163. doi :10.1037/xhp0000138

Putting oneself in another's shoes: do we really do that and when do we do it?

We recently showed that when we compute "how" an object is seen by someone else (level 2 visual perspective taking), we use an embodied mental rotation of our body, literally imagining ourselves in the other person's shoes. We do not use such mental rotation processes to solve all perspective taking problems however. For exemple, we do not use it when we simply compute whether an object is visible to someone else or not (level 1 visual perspective taking). These findings were published in two articles, one in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2013 and one in Cognition 2013.

We further showed that, while level 1 visual perspective taking occurs spontaneously in many situations, level 2 visual perspective taking only occurs spontaneously if we are engaged in an interactive task with someone else. These findings were published in two articles, both in Cognition: 2016 and 2016.

• Surtees, Andrew, Apperly, Ian, & Samson, Dana (2016). I've got your number: Spontaneous perspectivetaking in an interactive task. Cognition, 150, 43-52. doi :10.1016/j.cognition.2016.01.014

• Surtees, Andrew, Samson, Dana, & Apperly, Ian (2016). Unintentional perspective-taking calculates whether something is seen, but not how it is seen. Cognition, 148, 97-105. doi :10.1016/j.cognition.2015.12.010

• Surtees, Andrew David, Apperly, Ian, & Samson, Dana (2013). Similarities and differences in visual and spatial perspective-taking processes. Cognition, 129(2), 426-438. doi :10.1016/j.cognition.2013.06.008

• Surtees, Andrew David, Apperly, Ian, & Samson, Dana (2013). The use of embodied self-rotation for visual and spatial perspective-taking. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7(698), doi :10.3389/fnhum.2013.00698