Heterogeneity of social cognition in temporo-parietal junction: Overlapping yet distinct representation between visual perspective-taking and theory of mind

Visual perspective taking (VPT), particularly level 2 VPT (VPT2), which allows an individual to understand that the same object can be seen differently by others, is related to the theory of mind (ToM), because both functions require a decoupled representation from oneself. Although previous neuroimaging studies have shown that VPT and ToM activate the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), it is unclear whether common neural substrates are involved in VPT and ToM. To clarify this point, the present study directly compared the TPJ activation patterns of individual participants performing VPT2 and ToM tasks using functional magnetic resonance imaging and within-subjects design. VPT2-induced activations were compared with activations observed during a mental rotation task as a control task, whereas ToM-related activities were identified with a standard ToM localizer using false-belief stories. A whole-brain analysis revealed that VPT2 and ToM activated overlapping areas in the posterior part of the TPJ. By comparing the activations induced by VPT2 and ToM in individual participants, we found that the peak voxels induced by ToM were located significantly more anteriorly and dorsally within the bilateral TPJ than those measured during the VPT2 task. We further confirmed that these activity areas were spatially distinct from the nearby extrastriate body area (EBA), visual motion area (MT+), and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) using independent localizer scans. Our findings revealed that VPT2 and ToM have distinct representations, albeit partially overlapping, indicating the functional heterogeneity of social cognition within the TPJ.

Connecting Spatial Reasoning Process to Geometric Problem

The field of spatial reasoning has seen a lot of research. The process of spatial reasoning, on the other hand, needs to be investigated further. The goal of this study is to capture an elementary school student's spatial reasoning process when solving geometric problems. The spatial skills used in solving geometric problems were also identified in this study. A geometric test was given to seventeen elementary school students. Three participants were chosen as the study's subjects based on their written responses. According to the findings, the subject's spatial reasoning process always begins with the processing of information in mental visualization. Mental visualization is used to help with orientation and selecting the appropriate visual perspective. The spatial skills of spatial visualization and spatial orientation are critical in spatial reasoning. Furthermore, this research initiated the emphasis on the focus of spatial reasoning in the process.

The effects of body direction and posture on taking the perspective of a humanoid avatar in a virtual environment

Visual perspective taking is inferring how the world looks to another person. To clarify this process, we investigated whether employing a humanoid avatar as the viewpoint would facilitate an imagined perspective shift in a virtual environment, and which factor of the avatar is effective for the facilitation effect. We used a task that involved reporting how an object looks by a simple direction judgment, either from the avatar’s position or from the position of an empty chair. We found that the humanoid avatar’s presence improved task performance. Furthermore, the avatar’s facilitation effect was observed only when the avatar was facing the visual stimulus to be judged; performance was worse when it faced backwards than when there was only an empty chair facing forwards. This suggests that the avatar does not simply attract spatial attention, but the posture of the avatar is crucial for the facilitation effect. In addition, when the directions of the head and the torso were opposite (i.e., an impossible posture), the avatar’s facilitation effect disappeared. Thus, visual perspective taking might not be facilitated by the avatar when its posture is biomechanically impossible because we cannot embody it. Finally, even when the avatar’s head of the possible posture was covered with a bucket, the facilitation effect was found with the forward-facing avatar rather than the backward-facing avatar. That is, the head/gaze direction cue, or presumably the belief that the visual stimulus to be judged can be seen by the avatar, was not required. These results suggest that explicit perspective taking is facilitated by embodiment towards humanoid avatars.

Estudio contrastivo y multimodal inglés-francés de la traducción de construcciones expresivas de alivio en cómics

Traducir las interjecciones, onomatopeyas y sonidos inarticulados se ha convertido en un reto debido a la falta de límites de cada unidad y a la relación de estas con las emociones. El objetivo principal de este artículo es el análisis contrastivo y multimodal de construcciones expresivas de alivio inglesas en su paso al francés. Para ello, se establece un corpus constituido por series de cómics estadounidenses para analizar la emoción de alivio y las propiedades verbales y visuales de cada construcción, destacando su aspecto semántico, fonético, pragmático, morfosintáctico y paralingüístico. Aunque el alivio es una emoción presente en nuestro día a día, los cómics no representan de forma proliferativa esa realidad en su constitución. Sin embargo, de las construcciones de alivio halladas la mayoría son modificadas al francés, pese a la tendencia de prevalecer el original inglés. Así, este estudio aporta claves metodológicas para traducir las construcciones expresivas de alivio. Translating interjections, onomatopoeias and inarticulate sounds has become a challenge due to the lack of boundaries of each unit and their relation to emotions. The main objective of this article is the contrastive and multimodal analysis of English expressive relief constructions in their passage into French. For this purpose, a corpus constituted by series of American comics is established, which has allowed us to analyze the emotion of relief and the properties of each construction from a verbal and visual perspective, highlighting its semantic, phonetic, pragmatic, morphosyntactic, and paralinguistic aspect. Although relief is an emotion present in our everyday life, comics do not prolifically represent that reality in their constitution. However, of the relief constructions found, most are modified into French, despite the tendency to prevail the English original. Thus, this study provides methodological keys to translate the expressive constructions of relief. La traduction des interjections, des onomatopées et des sons inarticulés est devenue un défi en raison du manque de délimitation de chaque unité et de leur relation avec les émotions. L'objectif principal est l'analyse contrastive et multimodale des constructions expressives de soulagement anglais dans leur passage en français. Dans ce but, un corpus constitué par des séries de comics américains est établi afin d'analyser l'émotion de soulagement et les propriétés verbales et visuelles de chaque construction, en soulignant ses aspects sémantiques, phonétiques, pragmatiques, morphosyntaxiques et paralinguistiques. Bien que le soulagement soit une émotion présente dans notre vie quotidienne, la bande dessinée ne représente pas de manière prolifique cette réalité. Cependant, la plupart des constructions de soulagement trouvées sont modifiées en français, malgré la tendance à faire prévaloir l'original anglais. Ainsi, l'approche multimodale est essentielle à ces constructions et à leur rapport au soulagement.

Footpaths of the Late-Soviet Environmental Turn: The “Forest City” of Novosibirsk’s Akademgorodok as a Sociotechnical Imaginary

The founding of Akademgorodok near Novosibirsk in the late 1950s features prominently in the historiography of the Thaw and the general turn of Soviet science to the eastern parts of the country. This article puts this story into the context of the formation of modern “green” ideas in the late Soviet Union and reconsiders the relationship between humans and nature, along with the definition of nature itself. Akademgorodok produced a telling visual perspective: the architectural plan for the city dictated that its scientific, industrial, and living zones were drowned deep in the taiga. Architects named this type of urban planning “diffusive,” and memoirists described it as a “Forest City.” Using the term of Sheila Jasanoff, we designate this “Forest City” as a sociotechnical imaginary of Akademgorodok. Our aim is to study the historical roots of the “Forest City” and how it became a collective imaginary. How did it happen that in the 1950s and 1960s, when the “faces” of Soviet cities were defined by districts of standard panel houses, that a city was built near Novosibirsk in which so much attention was given to pre-human flora, fauna, and landscapes? What ideas and intellectual contexts composed the concept of Akademgorodok as a “Forest City”? Our answer possesses two dimensions. First, the rejection of the use of decorative elements in housing construction in the post-Stalin epoch stimulated architects to pay more attention to the greening of cities. They revived the concept of a “garden city” proposed by Ebenezer Howard on a new level. Second, the evolution of the ideas of Mikhail Lavrentyev, the founder of Akademgorodok, who upon arrival in Siberia applied the productivist program manifested in the slogan “Siberia is a treasure of resources,” but later changed his opinion to more “green” views under the influence of the so-called “Baikal Discussion.” The viewpoints of Lavrentyev influenced the design of this “center” of Siberian science, and then he formulated the idea of a “Forest City.” These contexts enable the utopian horizons and the search for models of a constructed future that were typical of the Thaw era to reflect upon the important challenges of the contemporary Anthropocene.

Level-1 Visual Perspective Taking Performance in People with High Narcissistic Traits

Background: Lack of empathy is one of the main characteristics of narcissists. However, it is not clear whether there is a similar deficit in other facets of mentalizing, such as perspective-taking.Method: In this study, we measured the taking visual perspectives ascribed to different targets (e.g., first-person self, third-person self-avatar, and third-person stranger avatar). Our study focused on separate groups of individuals with high and low self-reported narcissistic traits. Results: Participants reporting high Narcissism scores showed higher accuracy in a third-person perspective-taking task than did their low-Narcissism counterparts. However, when the first-person perspective was incongruent with the third-person (first person vs. self- tagged avatar), the accuracy of their responses decreased.Conclusions: The discrepancy between the two types of perspective taking of people with high narcissism can probably mean that the narcissistic people perfectly identify / empathize with one object (person, avatar, character, etc.) and therefore their perspective-taking is disrupted when they need to identify with more than one object that represent their self-attributed perspectives.