Spatial perspective-taking: insights from sensory impairments

Information can be perceived from a multiplicity of spatial perspectives, which is central to effectively understanding and interacting with our environment and other people. Sensory impairments such as blindness are known to impact spatial representations and perspective-taking is often thought of as a visual process. However, disturbed functioning of other sensory systems (e.g., vestibular, proprioceptive and auditory) can also influence spatial perspective-taking. These lines of research remain largely separate, yet together they may shed new light on the role that each sensory modality plays in this core cognitive ability. The findings to date reveal that spatial cognitive processes may be differently affected by various types of sensory loss. The visual system may be crucial for the development of efficient allocentric (object-to-object) representation; however, the role of vision in adopting another’s spatial perspective remains unclear. On the other hand, the vestibular and the proprioceptive systems likely play an important role in anchoring the perceived self to the physical body, thus facilitating imagined self-rotations required to adopt another’s spatial perspective. Findings regarding the influence of disturbed auditory functioning on perspective-taking are so far inconclusive and thus await further data. This review highlights that spatial perspective-taking is a highly plastic cognitive ability, as the brain is often able to compensate in the face of different sensory loss.

Balance Expertise is Associated with Superior Spatial Perspective-Taking Skills

Balance training interventions over several months have been shown to improve spatial cognitive functions and to induce structural plasticity in brain regions associated with visual-vestibular self-motion processing. In the present cross-sectional study, we tested whether long-term balance practice is associated with better spatial cognition. To this end, spatial perspective-taking abilities were compared between balance experts (n = 40) practicing sports such as gymnastics, acrobatics or slacklining for at least four hours a week for the last two years, endurance athletes (n = 38) and sedentary healthy individuals (n = 58). The balance group showed better performance in a dynamic balance task compared to both the endurance group and the sedentary group. Furthermore, the balance group outperformed the sedentary group in a spatial perspective-taking task. A regression analysis across all participants revealed a positive association between individual balance performance and spatial perspective-taking abilities. Groups did not differ in executive functions, and individual balance performance did not correlate with executive functions, suggesting a specific association between balance skills and spatial cognition. The results are in line with theories of embodied cognition, assuming that sensorimotor experience shapes cognitive functions.

Demonstratives can train spatial perspective taking: The case of Spanish

Demonstratives are used in all the world’s languages to establish joint attention between interlocutors. I have recently proposed that demonstratives further train speakers of different languages in spatial perspective taking by automatizing the computation of different relational values (e.g., the distance, familiarity or altitude of a referent) from different perspectives (the speaker’s, the listener’s or both) depending on the language. The present study starts by pointing out a common mis-analysis of the form ‘este’ in Spanish as a proximal demonstrative, when it is in fact used as a filler. I then report an online study (N=51) testing two alternative views of the Spanish demonstrative system: the distance-oriented view (according to which all Spanish demonstratives indicate relative distance from the speaker) vs the person-oriented view (according to which the proximal forms indicate proximity to the speaker, the medial forms indicate proximity to the listener and the distal forms indicate distance from both speaker and listener). The results of the study confirmed the person- oriented account, supporting the view that there is a fundamental distinction between near and far space in demonstrative use, with interactive factors (such as listener position) playing a role in far space.

Navigational experience and the preservation of spatial abilities into old age among a tropical forager-horticulturalist population.

Navigational performance responds to navigational challenges, and both decline with age in Western populations as older people become less mobile. But mobility does not decline everywhere; Tsimané forager-horticulturalists in Bolivia remain highly mobile into their 70s and beyond, traveling on small footpaths to gardens and in pursuit of game and other resources. We therefore measured both natural mobility and navigational performance in Tsimané adults, to assess changes with age and to see whether greater mobility was related to better navigational performance across the lifespan. Daily mobility was measured by GPS tracking, regional mobility through interview, and navigational performance through pointing accuracy and perspective taking in environmental space. Although mental rotation and spatial perspective taking declined with age, mobility and pointing accuracy remained high from mid-life through old age. Greater regional mobility was associated with greater pointing accuracy, suggesting that spatial experience at environmental scales may help maintain navigational performance.

Correlational Evidence for the Role of Spatial Perspective-Taking Ability in the Mental Rotation of Human-Like Objects

People can mentally rotate objects that resemble human bodies more efficiently than nonsense objects in the same/different judgment task. Previous studies proposed that this human-body advantage in mental rotation is mediated by one's projections of body axes onto a human-like object, implying that human-like objects elicit a strategy shift, from an object-based to an egocentric mental rotation. To test this idea, we investigated whether mental rotation performance involving a human-like object had a stronger association with spatial perspective-taking, which entails egocentric mental rotation, than a nonsense object. In the present study, female participants completed a chronometric mental rotation task with nonsense and human-like objects. Their spatial perspective-taking ability was then assessed using the Road Map Test and the Spatial Orientation Test. Mental rotation response times (RTs) were shorter for human-like than for nonsense objects, replicating previous research. More importantly, spatial perspective-taking had a stronger negative correlation with RTs for human-like than for nonsense objects. These findings suggest that human-like stimuli in the same/different mental rotation task induce a strategy shift toward efficient egocentric mental rotation.

Directionality eclipses agency: How both directional and social cues improve spatial perspective taking

Research on spatial perspective taking has suggested that including an agent in the display benefits performance. However, little research has examined the mechanisms underlying this benefit. Here, we examine how an agent benefits performance by examining its effects on three mental steps in a perspective-taking task: (1) imagining oneself at a location (station point) within in the array, (2) adopting a different perspective (heading), and (3) pointing to an object from that perspective. We also examine whether a non-agentive directional cue (an arrow) is sufficient to improve performance in an abstract map-like display. We compared a non-directional cue to two cues for position and orientation: a human figure (agentive, directional) and an arrow (non-agentive, directional). To examine the effects of cues on steps 2 and 3 of the perspective-taking process, magnitude of the initial perspective shift and pointing direction were varied across trials. Response time and error increased with the magnitude of the imagined perspective shift and pointing to the front was more accurate than pointing to the side, or back, but these effects were independent of directional cue. A directional cue alone was sufficient to improve performance relative to control, and agency did not provide additional benefit. The results overall indicate that most people adopt an embodied cognition strategy to perform this task and directional cues facilitate the first step of the perspective-taking process, imagining oneself at a location within in the array.

Alignment Effects in Spatial Perspective Taking from an External Vantage Point

In three experiments, we examined, using a perceptual task, the difficulties of spatial perspective taking. Participants imagined adopting perspectives around a table and pointed from them towards the positions of a target. Depending on the condition, the scene was presented on a virtual screen in Virtual Reality or projected on an actual screen in the real world (Experiment 1), or viewed as immediate in Virtual Reality (Experiment 2). Furthermore, participants pointed with their arm (Experiments 1 and 2) vs. a joystick (Experiment 3). Results showed a greater alignment effect (i.e., a larger difference in performance between trials with imagined perspectives that were aligned vs. misaligned with the orientation of the participant) when executing the task in a virtual rather than in the real environment, suggesting that visual access to body information and room geometry, which is typically lacking in Virtual Reality, influences perspective taking performance. The alignment effect was equal across the Virtual Reality conditions of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, suggesting that being an internal (compared to an external) observer to the scene induces no additional difficulties for perspective taking. Equal alignment effects were also found when pointing with the arm vs. a joystick, indicating that a body-dependent response mode such as pointing with the arm creates no further difficulties for reasoning from imagined perspectives.