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.