engleski

A person, a dog, and a vase: The effect of avatar type in a perspective taking task

Recent research has shown people are capable of automatic processing of what another person sees even when not explicitly taking the other persons perspective. This has been concluded based on studies conducted using the dot perspective task. In this task participants are cued the perspective (self/other) from which they are viewing stimuli (dots) and the number of stimuli. They are then asked to decide whether the cued number of stimuli can be seen from the cued perspective. Results show people are slower in their responses when a different number of stimuli can be seen from one's own and the avatar’s (other) perspective. In these incongruent trials the avatar's perspective interferes with the response about one’s own perspective, and one’s own perspective interferes with the response about the avatar's perspective. This indicates both perspectives are processed automatically. However, question remains whether this is purely a consequence of perceptual cueing or if social information contributes to the effect. The goal of 28 our study was to investigate differences in automatic processing depending on the species of the avatar in the task. The experiment was a 2 (self/other perspective) × 2 (same/different number of stimuli seen from the two perspectives) × 2 (person/dog avatar) repeated measures design. In a modified dot perspective task we instructed participants to respond as fast as possible with the number of stimuli (1 or 2) which could be seen from a previously cued perspective (self/other). Results from a three-way ANOVA showed participants (N=33) responded slower for incongruent trials (F(1, 32)=15.25, p<.01, ηp2=.32), and when taking the other perspective (F(1, 32)=11.40, p<.01, ηp2=.26). However, the avatar species by perspective interaction was also significant (F(1, 32)=13.04, p<.01, ηp2=.29). Post-hoc comparisons showed participants were significantly slower when taking a person’s perspective compared to their own, this difference was not significant when taking a dog’s perspective compared to their own. These results may imply additional time is required to take the perspective of a human being while the perspective of a dog represents a perceptive cue rather than requiring that additional step. We may conclude both perceptual and social information contribute to perspective taking. However, as expected, the contribution of social information varies depending on the type of avatar.

mentalizing, perspective taking, dot perspective task, visual attention

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