School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Devon PL4 8AA, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Devon PL4 8AA, UK.
Curr Biol. 2019 Mar 4;29(5):874-880.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.01.046. Epub 2019 Feb 21.
Visual perspective taking (VPT) is a core process of social cognition, providing humans with insights into what the environment looks like from another's point of view [1-4]. While VPT is often described as a quasi-perceptual phenomenon [5, 6], evidence for this proposal has been lacking. Here, we provide direct evidence that another's perspective can "stand in" for one's own sensory input during perceptual decision making. In a variant of the classic mental rotation task, participants judged whether characters presented in different orientations were canonical or mirror inverted. In the absence of another person, we replicate the well-established positive linear relationship between recognition times and angle of orientation such that recognition becomes slower the more an item has to be mentally rotated into its canonical orientation [7]. Importantly, this relationship was disrupted simply by placing another individual in the scene. Items rotated away from the participant were recognized more rapidly the closer they appeared in their canonical orientation, not only to the participant, but also to this other individual, showing that another's visual perspective drives mental rotation and item recognition in a similar way as one's own visual perspective. The effects were large and replicated in the three independent studies. They were observed even when the other person was completely passive, enhanced when the participant was explicitly instructed to take the other person's perspective, but reduced when the persons in the scenes were replaced with objects. The content of another's perspective is therefore spontaneously derived, takes a quasi-perceptual form, and can stand in for one's own sensory input during perceptual decision making.
视觉观点采择（VPT）是社会认知的核心过程，它使人类能够洞察到从另一个角度看环境是什么样子的[1-4]。虽然 VPT 通常被描述为一种准知觉现象[5,6]，但缺乏支持这一观点的证据。在这里，我们提供了直接证据，表明另一个人的视角可以在感知决策过程中“替代”自己的感觉输入。在经典心理旋转任务的一种变体中，参与者判断呈现不同方向的字符是规范的还是镜像反转的。在没有其他人的情况下，我们复制了公认的积极线性关系，即识别时间与方向角度之间的关系，使得物品在心理上旋转到其规范方向的角度越大，识别速度越慢[7]。重要的是，仅仅通过在场景中放置另一个人，这种关系就被打破了。远离参与者的物品以其规范的方向旋转得越近，其识别速度就越快，不仅对参与者，而且对另一个人也是如此，这表明另一个人的视觉视角以类似的方式驱动心理旋转和物品识别，就像自己的视觉视角一样。这些效果很大，在三个独立的研究中得到了复制。即使当另一个人完全被动时，也可以观察到这些效果，当参与者被明确指示要从另一个人的角度看问题时，效果会增强，但当场景中的人被物体取代时，效果会减弱。因此，另一个人的视角内容是自发产生的，具有准知觉形式，可以在感知决策过程中替代自己的感觉输入。
