The Role Of Inhibitory Control In Visual Perspective Taking

Visual perspective-taking(VPT)refers to the ability to perceive or understand a situation from an alternative point of view,such as that of another individual.Previous studies found that participants were easily interfered by his/ her own perspective when taking other's perspective and could not easily ignore what someone else saw when making self-perspective judgements.In addition,studies found that performance in VPT tasks was correlated with people's ability in inhibitory control.By using the negative priming(NP)paradigm,a few recent studies suggest inhibitory control plays an important role in solving level-2 VPT task.The present study tested whether inhibitory control was necessary in solving inconsistent level-1 and level-2 VPT tasks when taking one's own perspective and other's perspective.Experiment 1a tested whether inhibitory control was needed in performing level-2 VPT task when participants taking others' perspective.The task asked participants to judge how the figure in a picture saw the number.By using a negative priming design,the results showed that response time was longer when conducting a consistent task(i.e.,0/8)after they performed an inconsistent task(i.e.,6/9)than after a neutral task.The result indicated that when self-perspective differed from the other person's perspective,an individual needed to inhibit his/her egocentric perspective to successfully view the way the other person's perceives in level-2 VPT.Experiment 1b tested whether inhibitory control was needed in performing level-1 VPT task when participants taking others' perspective.The task asked participants to judge the number of dots the figure in a picture could see.By using a negative priming design,the results showed that response time was longer when conducting a consistent task(i.e.,all the dots were in the left-hand wall and figure in the picture was facing the left-hand wall)after they performed an inconsistent task(i.e.,some dots were in the right-hand wall but figure in the picture was facing the left-hand wall)than after a neutral task.The result indicated that an individual needed to inhibit his/her own perspective to evaluate what the other person could perceive when self-perspective differed from the other person's perspective in level-1 VPT.Experiment 2a tested whether inhibitory control was needed in performing level-1 VPT task when participants taking their own perspective.The task was similar to 1b,what the difference was that participants were asked to take their own perspective in priming stage and then take others' perspective.The results showed that response time was longer when conducting a consistent task after they performed an inconsistent task than after a neutral task.The result indicated that an individual needed to inhibit other's perspective to evaluate his/her own perspective when self-perspective differed from the other person's perspective in level-1 visual perspective taking.Experiment 2b tested whether inhibitory control was needed in performing level-2 VPT task when participants taking his/her own perspective.The task was similar to 1a,what the difference was that participants were asked to take his/her own perspective in priming stage and then take other's perspective in probing stage.The results showed that response time was longer when conducting a consistent task after they performed an inconsistent task than after a neutral task.The result indicated that an individual needed to inhibit other's perspective to evaluate his/her own perspective when selfperspective differed from the other person's perspective in level-2 VPT.In conclusion,the present study shows that taking other's visual perspective demands inhibition of egocentric perspective in both level-1 and level-2 VPT,and taking his /her own visual perspective demands inhibition of other's perspective in both level-1 and level-2 VPT.