scholarly journals Effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on visual perspective taking: A meta-analytic study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan-Wei Yao ◽  
Vivien Chopurian ◽  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Claus Lamm ◽  
Hauke R. Heekeren
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Brain Stimulation ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Level 1 ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
Level 2

Visual perspective taking (VPT) is a critical ability required by complex social interaction. Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) has been increasingly used to examine the causal relationship between brain activity and VPT, yet with heterogeneous results. In the current study, we conducted two meta-analyses to examine the effects of NIBS of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) or dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) on VPT, respectively. We performed a comprehensive literature search to identify qualified studies, and computed the standardized effect size (ES) for each combination of VPT level (Level-1: visibility judgment; Level-2: mental rotation) and perspective (self and other). Twelve studies (rTPJ: 11 studies, 20 ESs; dmPFC: 4 studies, 18 ESs) were included in the meta-analyses. Random-effects models were used to generate the overall effects. Subgroup analyses for distinct VPT conditions were also performed. We found that stimulation of rTPJ significantly improved participants' visibility judgment from the allocentric perspective, whereas dmPFC stimulation mainly influenced Level-1 performance from the egocentric perspective. For both areas, the effects of stimulation on Level-2 performance are negligible. These findings suggest that the rTPJ and dmPFC are involved in basic allocentric and egocentric perspective-taking processes, respectively. Notably, contrary to some theoretical models, neither of them appears to be necessary for more complex VPT with a higher requirement of mental rotation. These findings may help clarify the causal roles of the rTPJ and dmPFC in VPT and emphasize the importance of specifying VPT conditions in experimental designs.

scholarly journals Effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on visual perspective taking: A meta-analytic study

NeuroImage ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118462
Author(s):  
Yuan-Wei Yao ◽  
Vivien Chopurian ◽  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Claus Lamm ◽  
Hauke R. Heekeren
Keyword(s):  
Brain Stimulation ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Analytic Study ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking

scholarly journals Systematic Comparison of Brain Imaging Meta-Analyses of ToM with vPT

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aditi Arora ◽  
Matthias Schurz ◽  
Josef Perner
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Precentral Gyrus ◽  
Developmental Studies ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Extrastriate Body Area ◽  
Meta Analyses

In visual perspective taking (vPT) one has to concern oneself with what other people see and how they see it. Since seeing is a mental state, developmental studies have discussed vPT within the domain of “theory of mind (ToM)” but imaging studies have not treated it as such. Based on earlier results from several meta-analyses, we tested for the overlap of visual perspective taking studies with 6 different kinds of ToM studies: false belief, trait judgments, strategic games, social animations, mind in the eyes, and rational actions. Joint activation was observed between the vPT task and some kinds of ToM tasks in regions involving the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), anterior precuneus, left middle occipital gyrus/extrastriate body area (EBA), and the left inferior frontal and precentral gyrus. Importantly, no overlap activation was found for the vPT tasks with the joint core of all six kinds of ToM tasks. This raises the important question of what the common denominator of all tasks that fall under the label of “theory of mind” is supposed to be if visual perspective taking is not one of them.

Autistic children understand seeing and wanting

1991 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacinta Tan ◽  
Paul L. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Autistic Children ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Mental Age ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Level 1 ◽  
Psychological Tasks ◽  
Level 2

AbstractAutistic children were assessed for their understanding of seeing and wanting. In Experiment 1, they judged whether a target was visible to each of two observers (a Level 1 task of visual perspective-taking) and which of two targets each observer would identify as “in front” (a Level 2 task). The autistic children performed as well as normal children of the same verbal mental age on both tasks. In Experiment 2, autistic children identified the emotion that familiar situations would elicit, expressed a selective preference or desire, and reidentified that desire despite an outcome that thwarted it. Their performance was similar to that of normal and retarded children equated for verbal mental age. An explanation is offered for autistic children's difficulty on some psychological tasks and their relative success on others.

Autistic children understand seeing and wanting

1991 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacinta Tan ◽  
Paul L. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Autistic Children ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Mental Age ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Level 1 ◽  
Psychological Tasks ◽  
Level 2

AbstractAutistic children were assessed for their understanding of seeing and wanting. In Experiment 1, they judged whether a target was visible to each of two observers [a Level 1 task of visual perspective-taking] and which of two targets each observer would identify as “in front” [a Level 2 task]. The autistic children performed as well as normal children of the same verbal mental age on both tasks. In Experiment 2, autistic children identified the emotion that familiar situations would elicit, expressed a selective preference or desire, and reidentified that desire despite an outcome that thwarted it. Their performance was similar to that of normal and retarded children equated for verbal mental age. An explanation is offered for autistic children's difficulty on some psychological tasks and their relative success on others.

Group membership and the effects on visual perspective taking

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Schneider ◽  
Anne Grigutsch ◽  
Matthias Schurz ◽  
Romi Zäske ◽  
Stefan R. Schweinberger
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Mental State Ascription ◽  
Ethnic Nationality ◽  
Level 1

It has been hypothesized that visual perspective-taking, a basic Theory of Mind mechanism, might operate quite automatically particularly in terms of ´what´ someone else sees. As such we were interested in whether different social categories of an agent (e.g., gender, race, nationality) influence this mental state ascription mechanism. We tested this assumption by investigating the Samson level-1 visual perspective-taking paradigm using agents with different ethnic nationality appearances. A group of self-identified Turkish and German participants were asked to make visual perspective judgments from their own perspective (self-judgment) as well as from the perspective of a prototypical Turkish or German agent (other-judgment). The respective related interference effects - altercentric and egocentric interferences - were measured. When making other-judgments, German participants showed increased egocentric interferences for Turkish compared to German agents. Turkish participants showed no ethnic group influence for egocentric interferences and reported feeling associated with the German and Turkish nationality to a similar extent. For self-judgments, altercentric interferences were of similar magnitude for both ethnic agents in both participant groups. Overall this indicates that in level-1 visual perspective-taking, other-judgments and related egocentric interferences are sensitive to social categories and are better described as a flexible, controlled and deliberate mental state ascription mechanism. In contrast, self-judgments and related altercentric interference effects are better described as automatic, efficient and unconscious mental state ascription mechanisms. In a broader sense the current results suggest that we should stop considering automaticity an all-or-none principle when it comes theory of mind processes.

The presence of other‐race people disrupts spontaneous level‐2 visual perspective taking

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Zhai ◽  
Jiushu Xie ◽  
Jiahan Chen ◽  
Yujie Huang ◽  
Yuchao Ma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Level 2

Improving visual perspective-taking performance in children with autism spectrum conditions: Effects of embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies

Autism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136236132094935
Author(s):  
Pingping Ni ◽  
Lingfeng Xue ◽  
Jiajing Cai ◽  
Minjie Wen ◽  
Jie He
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Autistic Children ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
Object Based ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
Rotation Strategy

Visual perspective-taking is the ability to perceive the world from another person’s perspective, and research on visual perspective-taking ability in children with autism spectrum conditions yielded inconsistent results. To solve a visual perspective-taking task, people can mentally rotate themselves to another person’s location (embodied self-rotation strategy) or else rotate the object toward themselves (object-based mental rotation strategy). Previous interventions for autistic individuals have mainly focused on embodied self-rotation strategy, the visual perspective-taking mechanism in neurotypicals. This study examined the effects of both embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies in improving visual perspective-taking performance in 34 autistic children and 34 ability-matched neurotypical children. All children completed three tasks: one measuring baseline visual perspective-taking performance, while the other two measuring visual perspective-taking performance after instructions in embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies. The results indicated that autistic children had difficulty in baseline visual perspective-taking tasks. After a brief strategy learning period, autistic children benefited similarly from both embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation instructions, suggesting that there are various possible ways to improving autistic children’s perspective taking, and that further interventions for autistic children could consider combining different strategies that better suit their autistic traits. Lay abstract When answering how the same object might appear to others in different locations, people can provide answers by mentally putting themselves into another person’s location using the embodied self-rotation strategy or by rotating the target object toward themselves using the object-based mental rotation strategy. In this study, after learning the embodied self-rotation or object-based mental rotation strategies, autistic children improved their visual perspective-taking performance, which is believed to be impaired or delayed in autistic individuals. We recruited 34 autistic children and an equal number of ability-matched typical children and examined their visual perspective-taking performance at baseline and after learning the embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies. As previous visual perspective-taking and other social cognition interventions for autistic individuals have primarily focused on the embodied self-rotation strategy, showing moderate effectiveness and limited generalizability, we explored the effects of both embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies for improving perspective-taking performance and discussed their implications in this study. The results showed that autistic children had a lower performance at baseline compared with typical children; however, they were still sensitive to both embodied self-rotation and object-based mental rotation strategies. Unlike typical children, who gained more from the embodied self-rotation strategy, autistic children benefited similarly from the two strategies. This suggests that there are multiple ways to helping autistic children overcome their difficulty in perspective-taking tasks. Future interventions for autistic children could consider combining various strategies that better suit their autistic traits.

Try to see it my way – Examining the relationship between visual perspective taking and theory of mind in frontotemporal dementia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherie Strikwerda-Brown ◽  
Rebekah Ahmed ◽  
Olivier Piguet ◽  
Muireann Irish
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Real World ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Visual Perspective ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Visual Perspective Taking ◽  
World Perspective

The behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is characterised by pronounced alterations in social functioning, including the understanding of others’ thoughts and feelings via theory of mind. The emergence of such impairments in other social disorders such as autism and schizophrenia is suggested to reflect an inability to imagine the other person’s visual perspective of the world. To our knowledge, this hypothesis is yet to be explored in bvFTD. Here, we sought to examine the capacity for different forms of perspective taking, including visual perspective taking and theory of mind in bvFTD, and to establish their inter-relationships and underlying neural correlates. Fifteen bvFTD patients and 15 healthy Controls completed a comprehensive battery of perspective taking measures, comprising Level 1 (‘what’) and Level 2 (‘how’) visual perspective taking tasks, a cartoon task capturing theory of mind, and a questionnaire assessing perspective taking in daily life. Compared with Controls, bvFTD patients displayed significant impairments across all perspective taking measures. These perspective taking impairments, however, were not correlated with one another in bvFTD. Moreover, controlling for visual perspective taking performance did not ameliorate the deficits in theory of mind or real-world perspective taking. Region-of-interest voxel-based morphometry analyses suggested distinct neural correlates for visual perspective taking (inferior frontal gyrus) versus theory of mind (medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus), which appeared to partially overlap with those implicated in real-world perspective taking (inferior frontal gyrus, precuneus, temporoparietal junction). Despite pervasive impairments in all aspects of perspective taking in bvFTD, our findings suggest that these deficits may reflect distinct underlying processes. Future studies manipulating discrete aspects of the tasks will help to clarify the neurocognitive mechanisms of, and relationships between different forms of perspective taking in bvFTD, along with their real-world implications.

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