Perspective Shifting: Alternating Between ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in the Theory of Mind Mechanism

This research explored differentiation between ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in belief-attribution abilities (part of the Theory of Mind (ToM) mechanism). Adult participants completed a computerized false-belief task in which they attributed beliefs to themselves and other people, in a matched design, assessing behavioural and neural correlates of belief-attribution to the ‘self’ and ‘other’. Participants responded faster to self-oriented than other-oriented questions, and this distinction was supported by electroencephalography (EEG) measures, largest across central parietal lobes from 550ms after stimulus onset. Importantly, when a ‘perspective-shift’ was required within a trial, shifting from Self-to-Other was significantly slower than shifting from Other-to-Self. In contrast, in ‘no perspective-shift’ trials, no difference was observed between Self-to-Self and Other-to-Other trials. The results indicate that the ‘Self’ is consistently processed, whilst the ‘Other’ is only processed when explicitly necessary. Results support the notion of a Self/Other differentiation within the ToM mechanism, at both a behavioural and neural level.