EXPRESS: Unpacking mentalizing: the roles of age and executive functioning in self-other appraisal and perspective taking.

Abstract

Mentalizing involves a number of psychological processes designed to appraise self and others from different points of view. Factors affecting the flexibility in the ability to switch between self-other appraisals and perspectives remain yet unclear. In this study, we sought to (1) assess individual variability in processing and switching between self and other-oriented mental representations and perspectives in a sample of typically developing youths; (2) examine how age and executive functioning may affect this switching process. 88 adolescents and 163 young adults completed the Self Other Switching Task, a new computerized personality trait attribution paradigm. Measures of sustained attention, working memory and inhibition were used to assess executive functioning. Linear mixed models showed that participants were faster to make attributions from the self-perspective and referring to the self. They were also slower to disengage/switch from the self-perspective and the self-representation. Whereas there were no age differences in self-other switching efficiency per se, adolescents were slower than adults on trials involving appraisals of the other from the self-perspective. Importantly, higher verbal working memory scores were associated with better performance on incongruent trials and with switching scores. This study demonstrates the utility of a new experimental task permitting to tease apart the effects of self-other appraisal and perspective switching within a single paradigm. Our behavioral results highlight a self-cost observed in switching between representations and perspectives and emphasize the roles of age and working memory in simultaneous processing of self- and other-oriented information.