Abstract
In many daily face-to-face interactions, people are able to take the perspective of others, for example, coding right and left based on point-of-view of others. In the present study, we investigated whether observers are able to take the perspective of a non-human figure such as a cat, observing the same effects obtained with human or robot avatars. In both experiments, we used a centrally presented stimulus (i.e. a cat), with its tail lateralized to the left or to the right. Participants had to respond to the side of the tail with a lateralized keypress. In Experiment 1 (spatial perspective taking task), participants were required to explicitly adopt the cat’s perspective to respond, whereas in Experiment 2 (SR compatibility task), this was not explicitly required. In both experiments, faster RTs are obtained when the cat is presented back, with a greater difference between front and back views when the tail is on the right; furthermore, there is no temporal modulation of the back–front effect. These common results between the two experiments are interpreted on the basis of the spatial perspective taking processes, elicited voluntarily (Experiment 1) or spontaneously (Experiment 2).
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Data availability
Data and codes used are available upon reasonable request to the first author (gioacchino.garofalo@yahoo.it) or to the corresponding author.
Notes
An alternative analysis for both experiments is reported in supplementary materials. An additional within-participant ANOVA was carried out on RTs with Key side (left and right, according to participants’ perspective) and Tail side (left and right, according to participant’s perspective) as factors.
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Acknowledgements
We thank R.W. Proctor and J. Müsseler for their help in discussing our results. We also thank Juliana A. Lemos-da-Silva, Larissa V. Kamarowski, Carol L. Medeiros and Sarah Carvalho-Oliveira for stimuli preparation and data collection.
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This study was funded by CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, PIBIC/UFF/CNPq and PIBITI/UFF/CNPq.
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Garofalo, G., Gawryszewski, L.L. & Riggio, L. Seeing through the cat’s eyes: evidence of a spontaneous perspective taking process using a non-human avatar. Cogn Process 23, 269–283 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-022-01082-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-022-01082-5