Mentalizing Another's Visual World-A Novel Exploration via Motion Aftereffect

• Published in: Frontiers in psychology 2017-09, Vol.8, p.1535-1535
• Main Authors: Yuan, Xuefei, Wang, Nanbo, Geng, Haiyan, Zhang, Shen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: aftereffect; facilitation; mentalization; motion adaptation; Psychology; visual perspective-taking
• ISSN: 1664-1078; 1664-1078
• DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01535

Past research on level 2 visual perspective-taking (VPT) has mostly focused on understanding the mental rotation involved when one adopts others' perspective; the mechanisms underlying how the visual world of others is mentally represented remain unclear. In three studies, we addressed this question by adopting a novel VPT task with motion stimuli and exploring the aftereffect on motion discrimination from the self-perspective. Overall the results showed a facilitation aftereffect when participants were instructed to take the avatar's perspective. Meanwhile, participants' self-reported perspective-taking tendencies correlated with the aftereffect for both instructed and spontaneous VPT tasks, when the "to-be-adopted" perspective required the participants to mentally transform their self-body clockwise. Specifically, while facilitation was induced for participants with low self-reported perspective-taking tendencies (e.g., viewing a leftward motion stimulus under another's perspective enhanced subsequent perception of leftward motion from the self-perspective), those with high self-reported perspective-taking tendencies showed an adaptation aftereffect (e.g., viewing a leftward motion stimulus under another's perspective weakened subsequent perception of leftward motion from the self-perspective). For these individuals, the adaptation effect indicated the engagement of direction-selective neurons in processing of the subsequent congruent-direction motion from self's perspective. These findings suggest that motion perception from different perspectives (self vs. another) may share the same direction-selective neural circuitry, and this possibility depends on observers' general perspective-taking tendencies.