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Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence

Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first...

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Autores principales: Ferguson, Heather J., Brunsdon, Victoria E. A., Bradford, Elisabeth E. F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6244738/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30242574
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13415-018-0641-1
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author Ferguson, Heather J.
Brunsdon, Victoria E. A.
Bradford, Elisabeth E. F.
author_facet Ferguson, Heather J.
Brunsdon, Victoria E. A.
Bradford, Elisabeth E. F.
author_sort Ferguson, Heather J.
collection PubMed
description Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults’ visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person’s perspective. Participants completed the avatar visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective (Experiments 1 and 2) or only from their own perspective (Experiment 3), where the two perspectives could be consistent or in conflict. Age of avatar was manipulated between (Experiment 1) or within (Experiments 2 and 3) participants, and interference was assessed using behavioral (Experiments 1–3) and ERP (Experiment 1) measures. Results revealed that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when a child avatar was present, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective. We attribute this pattern to either enhanced visual processing for own-age others or an inference on reduced mental awareness in younger children. The findings argue against a purely attentional basis for the altercentric effect, and instead support an account where both mentalising and directional processes modulate automatic visual perspective-taking, and perspective-taking effects are strongly influenced by experimental context.
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spelling pubmed-62447382018-12-04 Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence Ferguson, Heather J. Brunsdon, Victoria E. A. Bradford, Elisabeth E. F. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci Article Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults’ visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person’s perspective. Participants completed the avatar visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective (Experiments 1 and 2) or only from their own perspective (Experiment 3), where the two perspectives could be consistent or in conflict. Age of avatar was manipulated between (Experiment 1) or within (Experiments 2 and 3) participants, and interference was assessed using behavioral (Experiments 1–3) and ERP (Experiment 1) measures. Results revealed that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when a child avatar was present, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective. We attribute this pattern to either enhanced visual processing for own-age others or an inference on reduced mental awareness in younger children. The findings argue against a purely attentional basis for the altercentric effect, and instead support an account where both mentalising and directional processes modulate automatic visual perspective-taking, and perspective-taking effects are strongly influenced by experimental context. Springer US 2018-09-21 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC6244738/ /pubmed/30242574 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13415-018-0641-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Article
Ferguson, Heather J.
Brunsdon, Victoria E. A.
Bradford, Elisabeth E. F.
Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence
title Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence
title_full Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence
title_fullStr Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence
title_full_unstemmed Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence
title_short Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence
title_sort age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: erp and behavioral evidence
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6244738/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30242574
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13415-018-0641-1
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