Henryk Bukowski

Can emotions influence level-1 visual perspective taking?

Emotions and perspective-taking are ubiquitous in our daily social interactions, but little is known about the relation between the two. This study examined whether and how emotions can influence even the most basic forms of perspective-taking. Experiment 1 showed that guilt made participants more other-centered in a simple visual perspective-taking task while anger tended to make them more self-centered. These two emotions had, however, no effect on the ability to handle conflicting perspectives. Since the guilt induction method used in Experiment 1 also induced feelings of self-incompetence and shame, Experiment 2 aimed at isolating the effects of these concomitant feelings. Self-incompetence/shame reduced participants’ ability to handle conflicting perspectives but did not influence attention allocation. In sum, these results highlight that emotions can affect even the simplest form of perspective-taking and that such influence can be brought about by the modulation of different cognitive mechanisms.

From gaze cueing to perspective taking: Revisiting the claim that we automatically compute where or what other people are looking at

ABSTRACT Two paradigms have shown that people automatically compute what or where another person is looking at. In the visual perspective-taking paradigm, participants judge how many objects they see; whereas, in the gaze cueing paradigm, participants identify a target. Unlike in the former task, in the latter task, the influence of what or where the other person is looking at is only observed when the other person is presented alone before the task-relevant objects. We show that this discrepancy across the two paradigms is not due to differences in visual settings (Experiment 1) or available time to extract the directional information (Experiment 2), but that it is caused by how attention is deployed in response to task instructions (Experiment 3). Thus, the mere presence of another person in the field of view is not sufficient to compute where/what that person is looking at, which qualifies the claimed automaticity of such computations.

Towards understanding rTMS mechanism of action: Stimulation of the DLPFC causes network-specific increase in functional connectivity

&NA; Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a powerful non‐invasive technique for the modulation of brain activity. While the precise mechanism of action is still unknown, TMS is applied in cognitive neuroscience to establish causal relationships between stimulation and subsequent changes in cerebral function and behavioral outcome. In addition, TMS is an FDA‐approved therapeutic agent in psychiatric disorders, especially major depression. Successful repetitive TMS in such disorders is usually applied over the left dorso‐lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and treatment response mechanism was therefore supposed to be based on modulations in functional networks, particularly the meso‐cortico‐limbic reward circuit. However, mechanistic evidence for the direct effects of rTMS over DLPFC is sparse. Here we show the specificity and temporal evolution of rTMS effects by comparing connectivity changes within 20 common independent components in a sham‐controlled study. Using an unbiased whole‐brain resting‐state network (RSN) approach, we successfully demonstrate that stimulation of left DLPFC modulates anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) connectivity in one specific meso‐cortico‐limbic network, while all other networks are neither influenced by rTMS nor by sham treatment. The results of this study show that the neural correlates of TMS treatment response are also traceable in DLPFC stimulation of healthy brains and therefore represent direct effects of the stimulation procedure. HighlightsSham controlled assessment of connectivity changes pre and post rTMS in 60 subjects.Unbiased analysis approach based on 20 common resting state networks (fcon1000).DLPFC rTMS increases connectivity between ACC and specific, fronto‐parietal network.

New Insights into the Inter-Individual Variability in Perspective Taking

This study aimed to test whether individual differences in perspective taking could be explained with two underpinning cognitive dimensions: The ability to handle the conflict between our egocentric perspective and another person’s perspective and the relative attentional focus during processing on the egocentric perspective versus another person’s perspective. We conducted cluster analyses on 346 participants who completed a visual perspective-taking task assessing performance on these two cognitive dimensions. Individual differences were best reduced by forming four clusters, or profiles, of perspective-takers. This partition reflected a high heterogeneity along both dimensions. In addition, deconstructing the perspective-taking performance into two distinct cognitive dimensions better predicted participants’ self-reported everyday life perspective-taking tendencies. Altogether, considering attentional focus and conflict handling as two potential sources of variability allows forming a two-dimensional space that enriches our understanding of the individual differences in perspective taking.

The impact of sleep deprivation on visual perspective taking

Total sleep deprivation (TSD) is known to alter cognitive processes. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to its impact on social cognition. Here, we investigated whether TSD alters levels‐1 and ‐2 visual perspective‐taking abilities, i.e. the capacity to infer (a) what can be seen and (b) how it is seen from another persons visual perspective, respectively. Participants completed levels‐1 and ‐2 visual perspective‐taking tasks after a night of sleep and after a night of TSD. In these tasks, participants had to take their own (self trials) or someone elses (other trials) visual perspective in trials where both perspectives were either the same (consistent trials) or different (inconsistent trials). An instruction preceding each trial indicated the perspective to take (i.e. the relevant perspective). Results show that TSD globally deteriorates social performance. In the level‐1 task, TSD affects the selection of relevant over irrelevant perspectives. In the level‐2 task, the effect of TSD cannot be unequivocally explained. This implies that visual perspective taking should be viewed as partially state‐dependent, rather than a wholly static trait‐like characteristic.

A database of psycholinguistic and lexical properties for French adjectives referring to human and/or nonhuman attributes.

The processing of human and nonhuman concepts (e.g., agreeable vs. edible) during basic comprehension and reasoning tasks has become a major topic of scientific inquiry. To ensure that the experimental effects obtained from such studies reflect the hypothesised semantic distinction, potential confounds such as psycholinguistic and/or lexical properties of the exact stimuli chosen need to be addressed. In the current study, normative data of such properties were obtained for a series of 875 French adjectives by asking 8 groups of 20 participants to each rate all words on one dimension of theoretical interest. The collected ratings indicate the extent to which each adjective evokes a sensory experience (concreteness), captures an enduring attribute (temporal stability), refers to a visible characteristic (visibility), denotes a neutral or an affectively laden concept (valence), signifies an attribute of low or high intensity, is familiar to the reader and can be used to describe people and/or inanimate entities such as objects. In addition, for each item its exact grammatical class (adjective vs. past participle adjective), length (i.e., number of letters, number of syllables), and word frequency was retrieved from the lexique3 corpus. The resulting database enables researchers to consider pivotal psycholinguistic and lexical properties when selecting human and nonhuman stimuli for future research.

The Neural Correlates of Visual Perspective Taking: a Critical Review

Purpose of ReviewVisual perspective taking (VPT) enables us to understand, anticipate, and interact with other social beings by accurately computing how and what they see in their environment. The present review provides an up-to-date review of the neural mechanisms underpinning VPT that integrates all neuroscientific methods and, importantly, organizes studies based on the distinct cognitive dimensions of VPT they measure.Recent FindingsRecent studies are characterized by a greater use of transcranial stimulation and a more diverse use of contrasts in analyses. Recent findings suggest namely that the temporoparietal junction has multiple roles in VPT and that the dorsal posterior precuneus is neither related to the inferential process nor the decentering process of VPT.SummaryBy organizing the findings according the respective cognitive processes tapped into, this review sheds a new light on the neural bases of VPT and advocates for an approach that acknowledges the multidimensionality of VPT.