Visual perspective taking is not automatic in a simplified Dot task

In the Dot task, children and adults involuntarily compute an avatar’s visual perspective, which has been interpreted as automatic Theory of Mind. We conducted three experiments in India, testing newly sighted children (N=5; all girls), neurotypical children (ages 5-10; N=90; 38 girls) and adults (N=30; 18 women) in a highly simplified version of the Dot task. No evidence of automatic perspective-taking was observed, although all groups revealed perspective-taking costs. A newly sighted child and the youngest children in our sample also showed an egocentric bias, which disappeared by age 10. Responding to recent work on what Theory of Mind tasks actually measure, we conclude that the standard Dot task relies so heavily on Executive Control that the alleged evidence of automatic Theory of Mind might simply reveal perspective switching costs.

Knowing (them) is Half the Battle: Binding Learning and Life Through Linking and Metaphor in Language Advising

In this short reflective paper, taking a narrative approach I explore my development as a trainee advisor within one practice advising session. In particular, I focus on my utilization of two advising strategies (metaphor and metaview/linking) through the examination of transcribed excerpts of our dialogue. In addition to reflecting on my performance in the advisor role, I discuss how integrating these strategies with information from a learner’s personal history may lead to opportunities for deep reflection, perspective switching, and rapport building between advisor and advisee.

Cultural differences in perspective switching: support for the representational hypothesis

Background: Mixed results have been presented regarding cultural differences in perspective taking. Two competing theories have been put forward that suggest interdependent self-construal, as observed in people from East Asian cultural backgrounds, would be associated with either worse perspective taking due to self-other mergence (representational hypothesis) or better perspective taking due to greater attention to others (attentional hypothesis), compared with people from Western countries with more independent self-construal. Research to date has been limited and no study to date has focused on switching perspectives during a task with both egocentric and allocentric demands. Method: A visual perspective taking task requiring responses from both the egocentric and allocentric perspective, across both perspective tracking (line-of-sight judgements) and perspective taking (embodied rotation) tasks, was completed by 126 healthy young adults. Fifty-nine were of Singaporean East Asian cultural background and 67 were Australian Westerners. Results: In the perspective tracking task, East Asians were slower to adopt the allocentric perspective. Both groups displayed an egocentricity bias indexed by an overall cost of switching back to the egocentric perspective on total response times. However, East Asians showed a greater influence from the allocentric perspective when switching back to the egocentric perspective. Both groups were slower when required to stick with the allocentric perspective compared to switch trials. In the perspective taking task, East Asians were slower at adopting the allocentric perspective. Both groups showed a cost of sticking with the allocentric perspective. Conclusion: East Asians take longer to adopt the allocentric perspective in tasks that require switching between perspectives. East Asians are more salient of other perspectives directly after adopting that perspective suggesting a contextually constrained self-other mergence not observed in Westerners. The results support the representational hypothesis of cultural effects on perspective taking.

Perspective Switching in Young and Older Adults

One aspect of visual perspective taking (VPT) is the ability to switch between perspectives associated with self and others. Attenuated inhibition of the egocentric perspective is thought to underlie perspective taking difficulties in older adults leading to impaired social function. 117 adults (50 older adults 55-79 years; 67 young adults 18-36 years) completed two visual perspective taking tasks. The first task measured perspective tracking and required participants to understand what can be seen from the egocentric or allocentric perspective. The second measured perspective taking and required understanding how objects are seen from the egocentric or allocentric perspective. Both tasks involved trials that were congruent or incongruent between the two perspectives in order to assess how the other perspective interferes with the task-relevant perspective. Trials were further separated into those that required switching (preceding perspective was different to current) or sticking (preceding perspective was the same). We show an egocentric switch cost during perspective tracking in younger adults thought to reflect inhibition of the default egocentric perspective in the preceding trial. However, this effect was not identified in older adults. Moreover, older adults showed greater interference from their own perspective when required to stick with the allocentric perspective. No age differences were identified during perspective taking with both age groups showing an egocentric switch cost and an allocentric stick cost. The results provide evidence for age-related changes in VPT that are dependent on the requirement to switch or stick perspectives. Increased egocentricity in older adults is apparent but dependent on the switch-related context.

Object Clitic production in monolingual and bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment

Pronominal clitics are sensitive to both morphosyntax and discourse. Problems in clitic use could therefore stem from morphosyntactic or discourse management problems in children with SLI. Previous studies focused on 3rd person clitic use identifying morphosyntactic problems. We compare 1st with 3rd person clitic elicitation by monolingual and bilingual children with SLI to examine whether perspective-switching in the same task would affect performance. Elicited 3rd person clitics were further compared with clitic use in narratives to investigate the role of richer discourse context in clitic production. Perspective-taking was independently examined with first- and second-order Theory of Mind tasks. Bilingual were more accurate than monolingual children with SLI in 1st person clitics, in the use of unambiguous clitics in narratives and in second-order ToM reasoning. We conclude that bilingualism seems to enhance SLI children’s discourse use and perspective-taking strategies which, in turn, improve their use of clitics in context-sensitive conditions.

Perspective switching as event affordance: The ontogeny of abductive reasoning

The present model identifies Index as the representational component driving children’s advances in abductive reasoning, capitalizing upon the means to subjunctivize within constructed events. As such, an essential semiotic device underlies the recognition of shifting perspectives to operationalize abductive reasoning within event profiles. Beyond using Index to establish the point of orientation (Origo), one “tries on” that Origo’s covert and overt orientation via deictic terms that encode Origo’s role as a conversational on-looker of an episode. This subjunctive competence entails taking note of cause-effect relations to anticipate the affective, social, cognitive, and physical viewpoints likely to be assumed by that Origo. Hypothesis-making then entails going beyond grounded experience to represent intermediate and final states of affairs for other Origos. Abductions require dynamically imaging how distinctive agents affect action schemes together with their relied-upon judgments to effectuate resultative states. The use of indexically grounded cognitions (given their role in preempting event relations) rivets the onlooker to the “why” of unexpected events and increases the likelihood that the guess of another within novel contexts is plausible. Shifting perspectives underlie abductions because they trigger defeasible but plausible explanations for puzzling events.

Co-ordination of spatial perspectives in response to addressee feedback

In this paper we investigate the effect of level of understanding revealed by feedback in the form of clarification requests from a route follower on a route giver’s spatial perspective choice in their response in route instruction dialogues. In an experiment varying the level of understanding displayed by route follower clarification requests (the independent variable), route giver perspective switching in response to this feedback is investigated. Three levels of understanding displayed by feedback are investigated: (1) low-level clarification requests indicating that the instruction was not processed, (2) semantic-level clarification requests indicating that the spatial direction given in the instruction could not be resolved as the speaker of the clarification request could not interpret which perspective was intended, and (3) high-level feedback which indicates that the route giver’s instruction was understood but which note an obstacle to following the instruction. Results show that perspective choice, which is a conceptual feature of language use, is sensitive to perceived level of addressee understanding. We found that route givers consistently switch perspectives in responding to semantic-level clarification requests but not in response to low-level ones, and also that switching occurs more for high-level feedback than for low-level feedback. We address how dialogue systems can take advantage of these findings by modelling our results in an Information State model of dialogue, presenting update rules for response generation which account for our findings and also update rules which enable generation of the feedback themselves.