Conflicting perspectives: Levels of perspective-taking and contributions to psychotic-like experiences

Abstract

Perspective taking is a basic social cognitive skill that has been shown to be impacted across the psychosis spectrum. Social cognitive abilities are important predictors of functional outcomes and may be related to symptom development in psychosis. However, no study has yet evaluated a model of how perspective-taking and other social cognitive domains relate to subclinical psychotic-like experiences among late adolescents and young adults. In this study, 137 non-help-seeking university students were assessed on their visual perspective-taking abilities using a computerized task as well as their attribution and hostility biases when completing a vignette-based questionnaire. Performance on the visual perspective-taking task was found to be predictive of distress related to positive and negative psychotic-like experiences. Visual perspective-taking was also associated with attributional biases under ambiguous circumstances, which were, in turn, associated with distressing psychotic experiences. The pattern of visual perspective-taking performance was also indicative of altercentric intrusion, or difficulty inhibiting irrelevant information related to another's perspective, rather than impairments in visualizing or simulating this perspective. These findings have implications for the understanding of basic social cognitive deficits in the psychosis spectrum and how they may relate or contribute to symptomatology.

Keywords: Attribution bias; Perspective-taking; Psychosis risk; Social cognition.