EXPRESS: The self-consistency effect seen on the Dot Perspective Task: Perspective taking or attention cueing?

Abstract

Some studies suggest that people automatically adopt others' perspectives without realizing it, based on the Dot Perspective Task. In this task, participants and a virtual person may see the same or different numbers of red dots, and participants judge the number of dots more quickly when the numbers match, known as the self-consistency effect. However, it remains unclear whether this effect truly stems from implicit perspective-taking or from a domain-general attentional cueing mechanism. This study conducted two experiments to explore this mechanism. Experiment 1 utilized visual adaptation to examine whether persons, arrows, and fans shared the same task mechanism. Results showed that fans, despite lacking social attributes, exhibit the same task mechanisms as person and arrows due to their directional cues. Experiment 2 employed eye-tracking to further compare person and fan tasks, revealing that fans also produced the self-consistency effect and exhibit the same eye movement patterns as person. Overall, these findings indicate that attentional cueing may play a more crucial role in the Dot Perspective Task, and the accuracy of the task in measuring implicit perspective taking abilities remains a topic for further consideration.