Language evolution seminar

Speaker: Cathleen O'Grady (Centre for Language Evolution, University of Edinburgh)

Title: Perspective-taking is spontaneous but not automatic: evidence from the dot perspective task

Abstract: Data from a range of different experimental paradigms – in particular (but not only) the dot perspective task – have been interpreted as evidence that humans automatically track the perspective of other individuals. Results from other studies, however, have cast doubt on this interpretation. The issue remains unsettled in significant part because different schools of thought, with different theoretical perspectives, implement the experimental tasks in subtly different ways, making direct comparisons difficult. Here, we resolve these issues. In a series of experiments, we show that perspective-taking in the dot perspective task is not automatic (it is not purely stimulus-driven), but nor is it the product of simple behavioural rules that do not involve mentalizing. Instead, participants do compute the perspectives of other individuals rapidly, unconsciously and involuntarily, but only when attentional systems prompt them to do so (just as, for instance, the visual system puts external objects into focus only as and when required). This finding prompts us to distinguish spontaneous cognitive processes from automatic ones, and we suggest that spontaneous perspective taking may be a computationally efficient means of navigating the social world.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

Andres Karjus

Centre for Language Evolution