The Role of Perspective Taking on Attention: A Review of the Special Issue on the Reflexive Attentional Shift Phenomenon

Abstract

Attention is a process that alters how cognitive resources are allocated, and it allows individuals to efficiently process information at the attended location. The presence of visual or auditory cues in the environment can direct the focus of attention toward certain stimuli even if the cued stimuli are not the individual's primary target. Samson et al. demonstrated that seeing another person in the scene (i.e., a person-like cue) caused a delay in responding to target stimuli not visible to that person: "alter-centric intrusion." This phenomenon, they argue, is dependent upon the fact that the cue used resembled a person as opposed to a more generic directional indicator. The characteristics of the cue are the core of the debate of this special issue. Some maintain that the perceptual-directional characteristics of the cue are sufficient to generate the bias while others argue that the cuing is stronger when the cue has social characteristics (relates to what another individual can perceive). The research contained in this issue confirms that human attention is biased by the presence of a directional cue. We discuss and compare the different studies. The pattern that emerges seems to suggest that the social relevance of the cue is necessary in some contexts but not in others, depending on the cognitive demand of the experimental task. One possibility is that the social mechanisms are involved in perspective taking when the task is cognitively demanding, while they may not play a role in automatic attention allocation.

Keywords: alter-centric intrusion; gaze perception; perspective taking; reflexive attentional shift; theory of mind; viewpoint; visual attention.

Figure 1

Our attention is reflexively shifted toward where this person is looking and pointing.

Figure 2

An example of consistent (a) and inconsistent (b) trials in the dot perspective task.

Figure 3

Example of the stimuli used by Langton [28].

Figure 4

One of the stimuli employed by Cole et al. [19].

Figure 5

The experimental procedure employed by Morgan et al. [32].

Figure 6

The three types of stimuli used in Actis-Grosso and Ricciardelli [33]. Each panel displays the eight directions conveyed by the different stimuli and the eight possible positions of stimulus presentation.

Figure 7

Visual Perspective Taking (VPT) level 1 and Visual Perspective Taking (VPT) level 2.

Figure 8

Gaze-maintained and gaze-averted avatars used by Gardner et al. [34].

Figure 9

Example of cues and task sequence employed by Hayward and Ristic [40].

Figure 10

Example of the apparatus employed by Klein [41].

Figure 11

Task sequence employed by Prpic [43]. In this example, the stimulus was the half note and the target appeared on the right visual field.

Figure 12

Example of cues and of a valid trial employed by Blair et al. [44].