Visual perspective-taking and image-like representations: we can see it

Visual perspective taking describes the ability to represent how others see the world. It is presumed to be crucial for social reasoning and may underpin the development of theory of mind. Yet, a recent series of experiments by Samuel et al. (2021) purports that people are entirely incapable of representing another person's view. In these experiments, participants were asked to judge which of two parallel and vertical lines would appear larger from another person's perspective. Results indicated a lack of basic awareness that the line closer to the other person would appear larger to them. Due to potential issues with key features of the task however, Samuel et al.'s (2021) conclusion of perspective taking inability may be premature. Specifically, features of how the critical question was phrased, how the stimuli were created, and the way in which participants responded, likely obscured an underlying capacity for visual perspective taking. Over two experiments, we first demonstrate that minor adjustments to the original paradigm enables participants to reliably report another person's perspective. Second, by using a novel multi-trial adaptation of the paradigm, we show a large proportion of participants can make highly accurate judgements that closely track how another person's visual experience changes with location.