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

Bradford, Elisabeth E.F., Gomez, Juan-Carlos, Jentzsch, Ines (2014) Perspective Shifting: Alternating Between ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in the Theory of Mind Mechanism. In: Psychonomic Society's 55th Annual Meeting, November 2014, Long Beach, C.A., USA. (Unpublished) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:62428)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.

Abstract

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.

Item Type: Conference or workshop item (Poster)
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Funders: Economic and Social Research Council (https://ror.org/03n0ht308)
Depositing User: Lizzie Bradford
Date Deposited: 27 Jul 2017 15:43 UTC
Last Modified: 17 Aug 2022 11:01 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/62428 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Bradford, Elisabeth E.F..

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7647-0891
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