Distinct task-independent visual thresholds for egocentric and allocentric information pick up

The dominant view of the ventral and dorsal visual systems is that they subserve perception and action. De Wit, Van der Kamp, and Masters (2011) suggested that a more fundamental distinction might exist between the nature of information exploited by the systems. The present study distinguished between these accounts by asking participants to perform delayed matching (perception), pointing (action) and perceptual judgment responses to masked Müller-Lyer stimuli of varying length. Matching and pointing responses of participants who could not perceptually judge stimulus length at brief durations remained sensitive to veridical stimulus length (egocentric information), but not the illusion (allocentric, context-dependent information), which was effective at long durations. Distinct thresholds for egocentric and allocentric information pick up were thus evident irrespective of whether perception (matching) or action (pointing) responses were required. It was concluded that the dorsal and ventral systems may be delineated fundamentally by fast egocentric- and slower allocentric information pick up, respectively.     

Do health beliefs about COVID-19 predict morbidity? A longitudinal study

In a highly powered (N ≈ 5000), six-months longitudinal study (December 2020-May 2021), we tested the assumption that beliefs concerning COVID-19 and the precautions against it predicted morbidity. Six months after having filled out a survey measuring beliefs about the disease and the precautions against it, participants reported if they were or had been ill with COVID-19. A lower likelihood of being or having been ill with COVID-19 was predicted by personal optimism concerning infection, perceived personal control over infection, perceived effectiveness of precautions, and self-reported personal or better-than-average adherence to the precautions. A higher likelihood of being or having been ill with COVID-19 was predicted by perceived personal control over a good outcome of an infection, egocentric impact perception concerning the impact of the disease, perceived difficulty of adherence to the precautions, and both personal and egocentric impact perception concerning the impact of the precautions. Comparative optimism did not predict morbidity, nor did personal optimism concerning severe disease or a good outcome, perceived personal control over severe disease, and moralization of the precautions. We discuss implications for public health communication.     

Seeing the world through another person’s eyes: Simulating selective attention via action observation

Selective attention is usually considered an egocentric mechanism, biasing sensory information based on its behavioural relevance to oneself. This study provides evidence for an equivalent allocentric mechanism that allows passive observers to selectively attend to information from the perspective of another person. In a negative priming task, participants reached for a red target stimulus whilst ignoring a green distractor. Distractors located close to their hand were inhibited strongly, consistent with an egocentric frame of reference. When participants took turns with another person, the pattern of negative priming shifted to an allocentric frame of reference: locations close to the hand of the observed agent (but far away from the participant’s hand) were inhibited strongly. This suggests that witnessing another’s action leads the observer to simulate the same selective attention mechanisms such that they effectively perceive their surroundings from the other person’s perspective.     

听障和听力正常人群空间主导性和空间参照框架的交互作用

通过要求被试分别在近处空间和远处空间完成空间参照框架的判断任务, 考察了听障和听力正常人群空间主导性和空间参照框架的交互作用。结果表明：(1)相对于听力正常人群, 听障人群完成自我参照框架判断任务的反应时更长, 而在完成环境参照框架判断任务无显著差异; (2)听障人群和听力正常人群空间主导性和空间参照框架交互作用呈现出相反模式。研究表明, 听障人群在听力功能受损后, 其空间主导性和空间参照框架的交互作用也产生了变化。     

Planning, personality, and prediction: The role of future focus in optimistic time predictions

The present studies examined cognitive processes underlying the tendency to underestimate project completion times. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that people generate overly optimistic predictions, in part, because they focus narrowly on their future plans for the target task and thus neglect other useful sources of information. Consistent with the hypothesis, instructing participants to adopt a “future focus”—in which they generated concrete, specific plans for the task at hand—led them to make more optimistic predictions about when they would complete their intended Christmas shopping (Study 1) and major school assignments (Study 2). The future focus manipulation did not have a corresponding effect on actual completion times, and thus increased the degree of optimistic bias in prediction. The studies also demonstrated that the optimistic prediction bias generalized across different task domains, relevant individual differences (i.e., trait optimism and procrastination), and other contextual variations.     

Sex differences in dogs’ social learning of spatial information

We used a modified version of the Do as I Do paradigm to investigate dogs’ preference and flexibility in the acquisition of different types of spatial information in social learning situations. When required to match the location of the demonstration, dogs (N = 16) preferentially relied on allocentric information, i.e., the relationship between the location of the demonstration and the various objects surrounding it. However, when allocentric cues were inadequate to solve the task, dogs learned to rely on egocentric information, i.e., the direction—left/right—taken by the human demonstrator. The ease of resorting to the non-preferred egocentric strategy was sex-dependent with males acquiring the egocentric strategy in fewer trials than females. This study shows that dogs rely preferentially on allocentric cues when recalling socially acquired spatial information. However, they are impressively flexible in switching to egocentric strategies according to the task requirements. Whether preference for the allocentric strategy in processing spatial information is embedded in the nature of social learning or restricted to our paradigm is an open question. This study also supports the idea that sex differences in cognitive domains are widespread among mammals and calls for further investigations aimed at shedding light on the evolution, function and mechanisms of such differences.     

视觉观点采择中自我中心性偏差的抑制和归因之争

自我中心性偏差是社交失败的重要原因, 但其产生机制还存在争议。以往研究存在抑制性选择模型与流利性错误归因两种理论观点：前者认为对自身观点的抑制失败会导致自我中心性偏差; 后者则认为错误地选择自身更为流畅的信息会导致自我中心性偏差。为整合上述争论, 提出抑制-归因协同作用模型, 认为抑制和归因两种加工或可共同导致自我中心性偏差。未来研究应借助精巧的研究范式和特殊被试群体, 进一步验证该模型。     

Disruptions to number bisection after brain injury: Neglecting parts of the Mental Number Line or working memory impairments?

The aim of this study was to investigate the mechanisms underlying consistent directional number bisection bias in a chronic neuropsychological sample, not selected based on behaviour or lesion definitions. Patients completed a test battery that included measures of number bisection, line bisection, verbal working memory, visual-spatial working memory, egocentric neglect and allocentric neglect. Neither the neglect nor working memory measures were found to significantly correlate with number bisection. Furthermore, when outlier patients with very distinct number bisection biases were compared to patients who did not show any number bisection difficulties, no differences were found between the two groups on any of the other behavioural measures. We conclude that number bisection difficulties are not consistently based on any single deficit, be it neglect or working memory, and biases in number bisection should not be assumed to directly reflect problems in either of these areas.     

Emergence of an egocentric cue guiding and allocentric inferring strategy that mirrors hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression in the Morris water maze

From insects to humans, successful navigation relies on retained representations of spatial relations. These representations are thought to depend on the hippocampal formation, particularly those that are independent of the navigator (allocentric representations). The Morris water maze is a simple and popular task often used to assess spatial navigation. But how animals navigate toward and retain information regarding the location of the goal in this task remains unclear. We provide a comprehensive account of how the water maze is accomplished behaviourally. Our findings suggest that animals solve the task using distal cues via an initial view-matching strategy that is supported by egocentric guidance. Through increased training, however, an emergence of an egocentric-guiding strategy combined with the animal’s greater ability to infer the hidden platform’s location (via allocentric extrapolation) emerges. We also demonstrate that behavioural changes, towards a more allocentric strategy, are reflected in increases in hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor.     

序列本体感觉学习获得稳定的自我中心空间表征*

通过同步视觉或者序列本体感觉,被试学习不规则场景。学习完毕之后,在面对学习方向、自主旋转240°、和持续旋转直至迷向3种运动条件下,被试随机指出各个物体的位置。迷向导致同步视觉学习组指向的内部一致性显著变差,而序列本体感觉学习组不受迷向影响。离线的相对位置判断任务表明两组被试的环境中心空间表征没有差异。这证明通过序列本体感觉学习被试也可以形成稳定的自我中心空间表征,支持了空间快照理论的扩展和空间认知的功能等价假说。     

A broad assessment of theory of mind in adolescence: The complexity of mindreading

The aim of this research was to provide an articulated assessment of several different ToM components, namely first- vs. third-person, egocentric vs. allocentric, and first- vs. second-order ToM, in preadolescence and adolescence. Our expectations for the sample of 80 juveniles that participated in the research were that: (1) ToM abilities would improve with age; (2) participants would perform better at first-person than at third-person tasks; (3) participants would perform better at first-order than at second-order tasks; (4) girls will perform systematically better than boys. We also explored possible differences in performance (5) in the allocentric vs. the egocentric perspectives as well as (6) in the comprehension of different types of mental states, namely desires, beliefs and positive and negative emotions. Overall our expectations were confirmed. Our data confirmed that all ToM aspects we investigated keep maturing during preadolescence and adolescence.     

Object localisation and frames of reference

In this paper, we explore which spatial frames of reference, egocentric or allocentric, are used to locate objects either in relation to ourselves (i.e. subject-to-object localisation) or to other objects (i.e. object-to-object localisation). In particular, we wanted to know whether the same or different frames of reference are used in these two different kinds of localisation after learning the environment in an egocentric way. Egocentric frames of reference are determined by the position of the person in relation to the spatial layout, whereas allocentric frames of reference are centred on the environment or on objects, independent of a persons position. We hypothesised that subject-to-object localisation is based on egocentric spatial representations, whereas object-to-object localisation is based on allocentric spatial representations. Participants were asked to study eight common objects, placed in a circle. Next, half of the participants had to point to an object in relation to their imagined position (egocentric condition) and the other half to an object in relation to another object (allocentric condition). The overall results show no difference between subject-to-object and object-to-object localisation. In both cases, access to positions corresponding to the front/back body axis was facilitated, in terms of both latency and error. Moreover, participants were able to retrieve objects positions better from the perspective from which they had learned the spatial array than from new perspectives. These results support the conclusion that egocentric coordinates, which are selected on the basis of our body-centred experience of the environment, define spatial representations underlying both subject-to-object and object-to-object localisation.     

External human-machine interfaces: Effects of message perspective

Future automated vehicles may be equipped with external Human-Machine Interfaces (eHMIs). Currently, little is known about the effect of the perspective of the eHMI message on crossing decisions of pedestrians. We performed an experiment to examine the effects of images depicting eHMI messages of different perspectives (egocentric from the pedestrian’s point of view: WALK, DON’T WALK, allocentric: BRAKING, DRIVING, and ambiguous: GO, STOP) on participants’ (N = 103) crossing decisions, response times, and eye movements. Considering that crossing the road can be cognitively demanding, we added a memory task in two-thirds of the trials. The results showed that egocentric messages yielded higher subjective clarity ratings than the other messages as well as higher objective clarity scores (i.e., more uniform crossing decisions) and faster response times than the allocentric BRAKING and the ambiguous STOP. When participants were subjected to the memory task, pupil diameter increased, and crossing decisions were reached faster as compared to trials without memory task. Regarding the ambiguous messages, most participants crossed for the GO message and did not cross for the STOP message, which points towards an egocentric perspective taken by the participant. More lengthy text messages (e.g., DON’T WALK) yielded a higher number of saccades but did not cause slower response times. We conclude that pedestrians find egocentric eHMI messages clearer than allocentric ones, and take an egocentric perspective if the message is ambiguous. Our results may have important implications, as the consensus among eHMI researchers appears to be that egocentric text-based eHMIs should not be used in traffic.     

Stepping Into a Map: Initial Heading Direction Influences Spatial Memory Flexibility

Learning a novel environment involves integrating first‐person perceptual and motoric experiences with developing knowledge about the overall structure of the surroundings. The present experiments provide insights into the parallel development of these egocentric and allocentric memories by intentionally conflicting body‐ and world‐centered frames of reference during learning, and measuring outcomes via online and offline measures. Results of two experiments demonstrate faster learning and increased memory flexibility following route perspective reading (Experiment 1) and virtual navigation (Experiment 2) when participants begin exploring the environment on a northward (vs. any other direction) allocentric heading. We suggest that learning advantages due to aligning body‐centered (left/right/forward/back) with world‐centered (NSEW) reference frames are indicative of three features of spatial memory development and representation. First, memories for egocentric and allocentric information develop in parallel during novel environment learning. Second, cognitive maps have a preferred orientation relative to world‐centered coordinates. Finally, this preferred orientation corresponds to traditional orientation of physical maps (i.e., north is upward), suggesting strong associations between daily perceptual and motor experiences and the manner in which we preferentially represent spatial knowledge.     

Visual enhancement of touch and the bodily self

We experience our own body through both touch and vision. We further see that others’ bodies are similar to our own body, but we have no direct experience of touch on others’ bodies. Therefore, relations between vision and touch are important for the sense of self and for mental representation of one’s own body. For example, seeing the hand improves tactile acuity on the hand, compared to seeing a non-hand object. While several studies have demonstrated this visual enhancement of touch (VET) effect, its relation to the ‘bodily self’, or mental representation of one’s own body remains unclear. We examined whether VET is an effect of seeing a hand, or of seeing my hand, using the rubber hand illusion. In this illusion, a prosthetic hand which is brushed synchronously—but not asynchronously—with one’s own hand is felt to actually be one’s hand. Thus, we manipulated whether or not participants felt like they were looking directly at their hand, while holding the actual stimulus they viewed constant. Tactile acuity was measured by having participants judge the orientation of square-wave gratings. Two characteristic effects of VET were observed: (1) cross-modal enhancement from seeing the hand was inversely related to overall tactile acuity, and (2) participants near sensory threshold showed significant improvement following synchronous stroking, compared to asynchronous stroking or no stroking at all. These results demonstrate a clear functional relation between the bodily self and basic tactile perception.     

Perceptions of goal-directed activities of optimists and pessimists: a personal projects analysis

In this research the authors examined the relationship between optimism and personal projects in a community sample. Three hundred twenty-five community volunteers completed the Personal Projects Analysis (PPA; B. R. Little, 1983) and measures of self-reported optimism and sociodemographic information. Participants who reported high levels of optimism rated their idiosyncratic personal goals significantly higher on PPA factors reflecting Positive Identity Fulfillment and Mastery-Control and significantly lower on the factor reflecting Perceived Strain than did participants who reported low levels of optimism. After the impact of age and education on optimism were statistically controlled, the Perceived Strain and Mastery-Control factors made significant contributions to the prediction of self-reported optimism in both initial and cross-validation samples. Findings indicate that highly optimistic individuals can be differentiated from their less optimistic peers on the basis of their perceptions of idiosyncratic goals. From an expectancy valence perspective, such differences have a direct bearing on individuals' behavior and may be associated with outcomes such as learned helplessness and procrastination.     

The impact of construal level on happiness,hope, optimism,life satisfaction,and love of life: A longitudinal and experimental study

This study sought to identify the impact of the construal level of people's perception on selected positive psychology factors: happiness, hope, optimism, satisfaction with life, and love of life. The experimental design of the study was based on pre–post measures for four groups, including three experimental groups and one control group. The sample consisted of students from the University of Kuwait studying in several colleges (276 participants: 65 males and 211 females). The study posited that using two construal levels of people's perception concurrently (low/high) would result in a greater impact on the selected positive psychology factors compared with using one construal level and that the smallest impact would occur in a control group. The greatest impact was observed on happiness when applying both construal levels (high/low group), while the smallest impact was found in the control group. The results showed no significant differences for the positive factors regarding the demographic variables except for gender in the case of happiness, in which men felt happier than women. It could be concluded that using high-level and low-level construals increase the opportunity for positive psychology factors like happiness, hope, and optimism.     

Egocentric/allocentric and coordinate/categorical haptic encoding in blind people

In this research, the impact of visual experience on the capacity to use egocentric (body-centered) and allocentric (object-centered) representations in combination with categorical (invariant non-metric) and coordinate (variable metric) spatial relations was examined. Participants memorized through haptic (congenitally blind, adventitiously blind, and blindfolded) and haptic + visual (sighted) exploration triads of 3D objects and then they were asked to judge: "which object was closest/farthest to you?" (egocentric-coordinate); "which object was on your left/right?" (egocentric-categorical); "which object was closest/farthest to a target object (e.g., cone)?" (allocentric-coordinate); "which object was on the left/right of the target object (e.g., cone)?" (allocentric-categorical). The results showed a slowdown in processing time when congenitally blind people provided allocentric-coordinate judgments and adventitiously blind people egocentric-categorical judgments. Moreover, in egocentric judgments, adventitiously blind participants were less accurate than sighted participants. However, the overall performance was quite good and this supports the idea that the differences observed are more quantitative than qualitative. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

The monologue of the double: Allocentric reduplication of the own voice alters bodily self-perception

During autoscopic phenomena, people perceive a double of themselves in extrapersonal space. Such clinical allocentric self-experiences sometimes co-occur with auditory hallucinations, yet experimental setups to induce similar illusions in healthy participants have generally neglected acoustic cues. We investigated whether feeling the presence of an auditory double could be provoked experimentally by recording healthy participants’ own versus another person’s voice and movements using binaural headphones from an egocentric (the participants' own) and an allocentric (a dummy head located elsewhere) perspective. When hearing themselves allocentrically, participants reported feeling a self-identified presence extracorporeally, an arguably distinct quality of autoscopy. Our results suggest that participants without hallucinatory experiences localized their own voice closer to themselves compared to that of another person. Explorative findings suggest that distinct patterns for hallucinators should be further investigated. This study suggests a successful induction of the feeling of an acoustic doppelganger, bridging clinical phenomena and experimental work.     

Is ‘object-centred neglect’ a homogeneous entity?

The nature of object-centred (allocentric) neglect and the possibility of dissociating it from egocentric (subject-centred) forms of neglect are controversial. Originally, allocentric neglect was described by  and  in patients who reproduced all the elements of a multi-object scene, but left unfinished the left side of one or more of them. More recently, however, Karnath, Mandler, and Clavagnier (2011) have claimed that the severity of allocentric neglect worsens when a complex ‘object’ shifts from an ipsilesional to a contralesional egocentric position. On the basis of these and of other clinical data, showing that allocentric and egocentric neglect are strongly associated, they have questioned the possibility of dissociating these two forms of neglect, suggesting that egocentric and allocentric neglect constitute different manifestations of the same disturbed system. Since these statements were inconsistent with the clinical findings which had prompted the construct of object-centred neglect, we checked in a group of right brain-damaged patients, who had copied the original multi-object scene, if the degree of neglect for the left side of figures varied as a function of their position on the horizontal axis. Furthermore, we reviewed all papers where copies of other multi-object scenes had been reported. Results of both studies failed to confirm the assumption of a relationship between spatial location of the stimulus and severity of object-centred neglect. This discrepancy between our data and those obtained by Karnath et al. (2011) could be due to the characteristics of stimuli and of procedures used to evaluate ‘object-centred’ neglect. If the stimulus is complex and the task requires its thorough exploration, the spatial location of the stimulus will influence the severity of ‘object-centred neglect’. If, on the contrary, the stimulus is simple and can be identified with few eye fixations, the spatial location of the stimulus should not influence the severity of ‘object-centred neglect’. In any case, our data confirm the possibility of dissociating allocentric from egocentric neglect.