Take a Seat and Get Into Its Shoes! When Humans Spontaneously Represent Visual Scenes From the Point of View of Inanimate Objects. (December 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Quesque, François; Foncelle, Alexandre; Chabanat, Éric; Jacquin-Courtois, Sophie; Rossetti, Yves
• Is Part Of: Perception. Volume 49:Number 12(2020)
• Page Start: 1333
• Page End: 1347
• Publication Date: 2020-12
• Subjects: spatial perspective-taking -- egocentric -- affordance -- mentalizing -- social cognition; Perception -- Periodicals; Perception -- Periodicals; Perception; Periodicals; 153.705
• DOI: 10.1177/0301006620976980
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0301-0066

Abstract

Human description of the surrounding world may spontaneously rely on others' perspective, which is a crucial component of social cognition. In five studies, participants were asked to describe the spatial relations between objects in visual scenes including, or not, other agents. In Experiment 1, a substantial proportion of participants used an other-centered perspective in the presence of another agent, replicating classical findings. To our own surprise, we also observed that an even greater number of participants used an other-centered perspective when the human agent was replaced by an armchair. In order to explore this phenomenon, Experiments 2 to 5 compared the respective strength of chair-centered and agent-centered perspectives and/or set them into conflict. A significant proportion of participants spontaneously took the seat's perspective even when it may not be sat on (Experiments 3 and 4) and even when the seat was not referred to (Experiments 4 and 5). Altogether, these findings suggest that perspective taking may spontaneously apply to inanimate objects. These results question whether such tendencies originate from social cognitive skills—as classically assumed—or reveal a nonsocial phenomenon. Future works should specifically test the widely assumed social nature of spontaneous perspective-taking.