Spatial perspective taking: Effects of social, directional, and interactive cues

Abstract

Including an avatar in the array in a spatial perspective-taking test improves performance, but it is not clear why. Different aspects of an avatar, including its directional nature, its agency (perceived ability for action), and its interactivity, may all influence perspective-taking performance. Experiment 1 examined how performance was influenced by a social directional cue (an avatar) and an abstract directional cue (an arrow). Participants performed best in the avatar condition and no better in the arrow condition than in a control condition. These results suggest that directionality of the cue alone is not sufficient to facilitate performance on this task. Experiment 2 compared an avatar to a concrete directional cue that was grounded in everyday experience interacting with objects, but was non-agentive (a chair). There was no significant difference between the avatar and the chair conditions, which both outperformed the control condition. Participants in both experiments and all conditions primarily reported utilizing mental simulation strategies that involved imagining themselves in the array of objects. The results suggest that grounding the task in everyday interactions with people or objects facilitates this mental simulation process and more generally enhances performance on perspective-taking tasks.