Do You See What I See (DYSWIS)? Investigating Individual Differences in Spontaneous Visuo-Spatial Perspective-Taking

Traditionally, visuo-spatial perspective-taking (vPT) has been investigated as an ability to take the perspective of others when explicitly instructed to do so. However, more recent findings suggest that, even in the absence of explicit instruction, people sometimes take the visual perspective of others when observing a visual scene, that is, they engage in spontaneous vPT. To explain why, research has so far focused on features of the visual scene. Here, I focused on the observer, by testing a novel task, the Do You See What I See (DYSWIS) task, across two projects and six studies, with adults (N = 603; age range: 18-36 years) and children (N = 108; age range: 9-12 years). In both age groups, results revealed that, even in the absence of correct or incorrect perspectives, some people are systematically more likely than others to engage in spontaneous vPT, across conditions and when tested 2 weeks apart. Using mixed-model analyses, the associations with cognitive and dispositional measures have been explored. In adults, these individual differences correlated with the ability to take the perspective of others when explicitly instructed to do so, and with more dispositional measures, such as self-reported empathy (in 3 out of 4 studies), while they were not associated with mental rotation, non-verbal reasoning abilities and executive functions. No significant relationship of spontaneous vPT with non-verbal reasoning and executive function measures has been found in childhood as well. Furthermore, these correlates did not depend on features of the visual scene, although some factors, such as the presence of humans or implied movement, did significantly contribute to spontaneous vPT. Children and adults did not differ in the extent of their spontaneous vPT, but children displayed more variability around their responses, possibly as a result of greater uncertainty. Taken together, this work demonstrated that people systematically differ in their spontaneous tendency to take the visual perspective of others. Given that this tendency is related to empathy, the study of vPT not only as an ability, but also as a disposition or motivation, becomes important. Keywords: Visuo-spatial Perspective-Taking; Spontaneous; Egocentric; Empathy; Individual Differences