Perspective Taking
- A model of vicarious self perception
Abstract: Self-perception theory posits that people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing their freely chosen actions. The authors hypothesized that in addition, people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing the freely chosen actions of others with whom they feel a sense of merged identity—almost as if they had observed themselves performing the acts. - Ability to track a characters mental perspective
Abstract: In comprehending stories, adults create mental models from which they follow the actions of the characters from the characters’ different mental vantage points. Using a novel methodology, this study is the first to examine when children attain the narrative ability to track the mental perspective of characters. That is, when do children follow the actions of a story to different locations that a character is thinking about? - Assessing relational learning deficits
Abstract: Perspective-taking, or the ability to demonstrate awareness of Informational states in oneself and in others, has been of recent interest in behavioral psychology. This is, in part, a result of a modern behavioral approach to human language and cognition known as Relational Frame Theory, which views perspective-taking as generalized operant behavior based upon a history of reinforcement for relational responding. - Exploration of the autistic childs theory of mind
Abstract: Children were shown a typical box of a certain brand of sweets, and they all thought that it contained that kind of sweet. To their surprise, however, the box contained something else. Yet, only 4 out ofthe 26 autistic children were able to anticipate that another child in the same situation would make the same mistake. - Fundamental constraint on perspective taking hindsight bias paper
Abstract: We propose that hindsight bias in adults and some limitations in children’s “theory of mind” (ToM), or mental-state reasoning, share a core cognitive constraint: a tendency to be biased by one’s current knowledge when attempting to recall, or reason about, a more naive cognitive state^regardless of whether that more naive state Is one’s own earlier naive state or someone else’s. That is, hindsight bias is a fundamental problem in cognitive perspective-taking. We review the developmental literature on hindsight bias as well as other limitations that resemble hindsight bias. - Great apes understanding of other persons line of sight
Abstract: Previous research has shown that many social animals follow the gaze of other individuals. However, knowledge about how this skill differs between species and whether it shows a relationship with genetic distance from humans is still fragmentary. In the present study of gaze following in great apes, we manipulated the nature of a visual obstruction and the presence/absence of a target.We found that bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas followed gaze significantly more often when the obstruction had a window than when it did not, just as human infants do. - I you me and autism an experimental study paper
Abstract: We tested groups of CA- and verbal MA-matched autistic and nonautistic mentally retarded children and young adults on a series of tasks that involved the comprehension and use of the personal pronouns “I,” “you,” and “me.” All subjects were able to comprehend these pronouns within the test situations, and there were few instances of pronoun reversal. However, autistic subjects were significantly less likely to employ the pronoun “me” in a visual perspective-taking task (when instead they tended to say: 7 can see the . . . ‘), and lower ability subjects were more likely to use their own proper names rather than personal pronouns in certain photograph-naming tasks.
There were also circumstances in which autistic subjects were less likely than controls to employ the pronoun “you” to refer to the experimenter. - Social understanding and social behavior
Abstract: This study investigated the relations between various measures of social understanding and social interaction competence in verbally able children with autism. Measures of social understanding included measures of verbalizable knowledge (false belief understanding, affective
perspective taking), as well as measures of more intuitive forms of social responsiveness (empathy, concern to distress, and initiating joint attention). - Three cognitive perspective taking tasks
Abstract: One explanation for the persistent social disabilities of individuals with autism is based on the nature of social stimuli, being transient, complex and very difficult to predict. It was suggested that autistic people’s performance on cognitive perspective-taking tasks (a measure of understanding of other people) would be enhanced with increased predictability and reduced transience of stimulus materials. Thus autistic and control subjects were tested on Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith’s (1985) “Sally/Anne” task and on two other perspective-taking tasks that involved more predictable interactions and nontransient cues. - Valuing the welfare of a person in need
Abstract: Two experiments examined the role of valuing the welfare of a person in need as an antecedent of empathic concern. Specifically, these experiments explored the relation of such valuing to a well-known antecedent—perspective taking. In Experiment 1, both perspective taking and valuing were manipulated, and each independently increased empathic concern, which, in turn, increased helping behavior. In Experiment 2, only valuing was manipulated.
