Age-related differences in visual perspective-taking

Emerging research has highlighted that despite high performance on explicit tasks, healthy adults demonstrate difficulties on implicit tasks when another person’s point of view conflicts with their own. This study examined how these perspective-taking abilities change across the life-span and how executive functions predict performance. Younger (18-40 years-old) and older (65-80 years-old) adults completed a level-1 and a level-2 visual perspective-taking task (with eye-tracking), and a battery of executive function tasks. Older adults had poorer inhibitory control and working memory, but comparable shifting and planning ability, compared to younger adults. Older adults were slower overall in both visual perspective-taking tasks. In addition, older adults showed specific impairments when there was a conflict between their own and another’s perspective. This pattern was also examined in gaze behaviour and pupillometry analysis. Egocentric interference in the level 1 visual perspective taking task (i.e., how much their own perspective interfered with ‘other’ judgements) was related to shifting ability and working memory in the younger adults only. However, egocentric interference in the level 2 visual perspective taking task was related to inhibitory control in the older adults. Overall, older adults displayed an enhanced self-bias in both level 1 and 2 visual perspective taking.