The impact of sleep deprivation on visual perspective taking.

Total sleep deprivation (TSD) is known to alter cognitive processes. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to its impact on social cognition. Here, we investigated whether TSD alters levels-1 and -2 visual perspective-taking abilities, i.e. the capacity to infer (a) what can be seen and (b) how it is seen from another person's visual perspective, respectively. Participants completed levels-1 and -2 visual perspective-taking tasks after a night of sleep and after a night of TSD. In these tasks, participants had to take their own (self trials) or someone else's (other trials) visual perspective in trials where both perspectives were either the same (consistent trials) or different (inconsistent trials). An instruction preceding each trial indicated the perspective to take (i.e. the relevant perspective). Results show that TSD globally deteriorates social performance. In the level-1 task, TSD affects the selection of relevant over irrelevant perspectives. In the level-2 task, the effect of TSD cannot be unequivocally explained. This implies that visual perspective taking should be viewed as partially state-dependent, rather than a wholly static trait-like characteristic.

Towards understanding rTMS mechanism of action: Stimulation of the DLPFC causes network-specific increase in functional connectivity.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a powerful non-invasive technique for the modulation of brain activity. While the precise mechanism of action is still unknown, TMS is applied in cognitive neuroscience to establish causal relationships between stimulation and subsequent changes in cerebral function and behavioral outcome. In addition, TMS is an FDA-approved therapeutic agent in psychiatric disorders, especially major depression. Successful repetitive TMS in such disorders is usually applied over the left dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and treatment response mechanism was therefore supposed to be based on modulations in functional networks, particularly the meso-cortico-limbic reward circuit. However, mechanistic evidence for the direct effects of rTMS over DLPFC is sparse. Here we show the specificity and temporal evolution of rTMS effects by comparing connectivity changes within 20 common independent components in a sham-controlled study. Using an unbiased whole-brain resting-state network (RSN) approach, we successfully demonstrate that stimulation of left DLPFC modulates anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) connectivity in one specific meso-cortico-limbic network, while all other networks are neither influenced by rTMS nor by sham treatment. The results of this study show that the neural correlates of TMS treatment response are also traceable in DLPFC stimulation of healthy brains and therefore represent direct effects of the stimulation procedure.

Three key questions to move towards a theoretical framework of visuospatial perspective taking.

What would a theory of visuospatial perspective taking (VSPT) look like? Here, ten researchers in the field, many with different theoretical viewpoints and empirical approaches, present their consensus on the three big questions we need to answer in order to bring this theory (or these theories) closer.

Medical student empathy and breaking bad news communication in a simulated consultation.

OBJECTIVES: This study examined the relationship between self-reported empathy and breaking bad news (BBN) communication skills performance in a sample of undergraduate medical students (n = 100) in the clinical years of their program. METHODS: Correlational and regression analysis examined the relationship between Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE-S) and Empathy Quotient (EQ) scores, and communication skills performance based on students' application of the SPIKES protocol to a BBN scenario in a simulated encounter. RESULTS: Higher BBN communication skills performance was positively correlated with scores on the "Social Skills" EQ sub-scale (r (99) = 0.31, p = 0.002), which measures spontaneous and context-independent use of social skills. Multiple regression confirmed that "Social Skills" sub-scale variation predicted BBN score variation (B = 2.17, 95% CI = 0.65-3.69, p < 0.01). A weak positive association was also observed between BBN score and the "Standing in Patient's Shoes" JSPE sub-scale (r (99) = 0.22, p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that specific aspects of dispositional empathy may moderate BBN communications skills competence in medical students. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: A better understanding of the moderating role of personality may lead to more tailored BBN communications skills training interventions and improved transfer of skills to workplace settings.

Automatic imitation is reduced in narcissists but only in egocentric perspective-takers.

Narcissism is a prevalent personality trait associated with low concern for others and high self-focus. Congruently, reduced automatic imitation in narcissists was reported in one study (23 participants), but it was not replicated in another (57 participants). In this study, 100 participants completed the previously used narcissism and automatic imitation measures but here along with a visual perspective-taking task allowing to dissociate 4 profiles of perspective-takers. While we confirmed a non-replication at whole-sample level, we did find a reliable negative association between narcissism and automatic imitation among egocentric perspective-takers, that is, characterized as highly self-centered when tasked to adopt someone else's point of view. Our findings shed a new light on whether narcissistic individuals are less sensitive to others, highlight the importance of considering performance-based individual differences within the narcissistic personality, and revisit the recent claim that automatic imitation poorly relates to social functioning by presenting a theoretical framework that questions the sensitivity of the automatic imitation task.

Socio-cognitive training impacts emotional and perceptual self-salience but not self-other distinction.

Training to inhibit imitative tendencies has been shown to reduce self-other interferences in both automatic imitation and perspective taking, suggesting that an enhancement of self-other distinction is transferrable from the motor to the cognitive domain. This study examined whether socio-cognitive training specifically enhances self-other distinction, or rather modulates self-salience, that is, the relative attentional priority of information pertaining to the self-perspective over information pertaining to the other person's perspective. Across two experiments, participants trained on one day to either imitate, inhibit imitation, inhibit control stimuli, or they were imitated. On the following day they completed a visuo-tactile affective perspective-taking paradigm measuring both self-other distinction and emotional self-salience, and a shape matching paradigm measuring perceptual self-salience. Results indicate no significant or consistent impact of training on self-other distinction performance, but reveal an increased emotional and perceptual self-salience following training to inhibit imitative tendencies. Together, these findings raise the question whether socio-cognitive training improves performance via enhanced self-other distinction, and invite to consider self-salience as a complementary angle to explain the past, present, and future findings on self-other distinction.

Association between dispositional empathy and self-other distinction in Irish and Belgian medical students: a cross-sectional analysis.

OBJECTIVE: Physicians' cognitive empathy is associated with improved diagnosis and better patient outcomes. The relationship between self-reported and performance-based measures of cognitive empathic processes is unclear. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of the association between medical students' empathy scale scores and their empathic performance in a visuospatial perspective-taking (VPT) task. PARTICIPANTS: Undergraduate medical students across two European medical schools (n=194). PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Two self-report empathy and one performance-based perspective-taking outcome: Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE); Empathy Quotient (EQ); Samson's level-1 VPT task. RESULTS: Higher scores on the 'standing in patient's shoes' subscale of the JSPE were associated with a lower congruency effect (as well as lower egocentric and altercentric biases) in the VPT (B=-0.007, 95% CI=-0.013 to 0.002, p<0.05), which reflects an association with better capacity to manage conflicting self-other perspectives, also known as self-other distinction. Lower egocentric bias was also associated with higher scores on the 'social skills' EQ subscale (B=-10.17, 95% CI=-17.98 to 2.36, p<0.05). Additionally, selection of a 'technique-oriented' clinical specialty preference was associated with a higher self-perspective advantage in the VPT, reflecting greater attentional priority given to the self-perspective. CONCLUSIONS: We show that self-assessment scores are associated with selected performance-based indices of perspective taking, providing a more fine-grained analysis of the cognitive domain of empathy assessed in medical student empathy scales. This analysis allows us to generate new critical hypotheses about the reasons why only certain self-report empathy measures (or their subscales) are associated with physicians' observed empathic ability.

New Insights into the Inter-Individual Variability in Perspective Taking.

This study aimed to test whether individual differences in perspective taking could be explained with two underpinning cognitive dimensions: The ability to handle the conflict between our egocentric perspective and another person's perspective and the relative attentional focus during processing on the egocentric perspective versus another person's perspective. We conducted cluster analyses on 346 participants who completed a visual perspective-taking task assessing performance on these two cognitive dimensions. Individual differences were best reduced by forming four clusters, or profiles, of perspective-takers. This partition reflected a high heterogeneity along both dimensions. In addition, deconstructing the perspective-taking performance into two distinct cognitive dimensions better predicted participants' self-reported everyday life perspective-taking tendencies. Altogether, considering attentional focus and conflict handling as two potential sources of variability allows forming a two-dimensional space that enriches our understanding of the individual differences in perspective taking.

Can emotions influence level-1 visual perspective taking?

Emotions and perspective-taking are ubiquitous in our daily social interactions, but little is known about the relation between the two. This study examined whether and how emotions can influence even the most basic forms of perspective-taking. Experiment 1 showed that guilt made participants more other-centered in a simple visual perspective-taking task while anger tended to make them more self-centered. These two emotions had, however, no effect on the ability to handle conflicting perspectives. Since the guilt induction method used in Experiment 1 also induced feelings of self-incompetence and shame, Experiment 2 aimed at isolating the effects of these concomitant feelings. Self-incompetence/shame reduced participants' ability to handle conflicting perspectives but did not influence attention allocation. In sum, these results highlight that emotions can affect even the simplest form of perspective-taking and that such influence can be brought about by the modulation of different cognitive mechanisms.

From gaze cueing to perspective taking: Revisiting the claim that we automatically compute where or what other people are looking at.

Two paradigms have shown that people automatically compute what or where another person is looking at. In the visual perspective-taking paradigm, participants judge how many objects they see; whereas, in the gaze cueing paradigm, participants identify a target. Unlike in the former task, in the latter task, the influence of what or where the other person is looking at is only observed when the other person is presented alone before the task-relevant objects. We show that this discrepancy across the two paradigms is not due to differences in visual settings (Experiment 1) or available time to extract the directional information (Experiment 2), but that it is caused by how attention is deployed in response to task instructions (Experiment 3). Thus, the mere presence of another person in the field of view is not sufficient to compute where/what that person is looking at, which qualifies the claimed automaticity of such computations.

A database of psycholinguistic and lexical properties for French adjectives referring to human and/or nonhuman attributes.

The processing of human and nonhuman concepts (e.g., agreeable vs. edible) during basic comprehension and reasoning tasks has become a major topic of scientific inquiry. To ensure that the experimental effects obtained from such studies reflect the hypothesised semantic distinction, potential confounds such as psycholinguistic and/or lexical properties of the exact stimuli chosen need to be addressed. In the current study, normative data of such properties were obtained for a series of 875 French adjectives by asking 8 groups of 20 participants to each rate all words on one dimension of theoretical interest. The collected ratings indicate the extent to which each adjective evokes a sensory experience (concreteness), captures an enduring attribute (temporal stability), refers to a visible characteristic (visibility), denotes a neutral or an affectively laden concept (valence), signifies an attribute of low or high intensity, is familiar to the reader and can be used to describe people and/or inanimate entities such as objects. In addition, for each item its exact grammatical class (adjective vs. past participle adjective), length (i.e., number of letters, number of syllables), and word frequency was retrieved from the lexique3 corpus. The resulting database enables researchers to consider pivotal psycholinguistic and lexical properties when selecting human and nonhuman stimuli for future research.

Cerebral lateralization of face-sensitive areas in left-handers: only the FFA does not get it right.

Face perception is highly lateralized to the right hemisphere (RH) in humans, as supported originally by observations of face recognition impairment (prosopagnosia) following brain damage. Divided visual field presentations, neuroimaging and event-related potential studies have supported this view. While the latter studies are typically performed in right-handers, the few reported cases of prosopagnosia with unilateral left damage were left-handers, suggesting that handedness may shift or qualify the lateralization of face perception. We tested this hypothesis by recording the whole set of face-sensitive areas in 11 left-handers, using a face-localizer paradigm in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (faces, cars, and their phase-scrambled versions). All face-sensitive areas identified (superior temporal sulcus, inferior occipital cortex, anterior infero-temporal cortex, amygdala) were strongly right-lateralized in left-handers, this right lateralization bias being as large as in a population of right-handers (40) tested with the same paradigm (Rossion et al., 2012). The notable exception was the so-called 'Fusiform face area' (FFA), an area that was slightly left lateralized in the population of left-handers. Since the left FFA is localized closely to an area sensitive to word form in the human brain ('Visual Word Form Area' - VWFA), the enhanced left lateralization of the FFA in left-handers may be due to a decreased competition with the representation of words. The implications for the neural basis of face perception, aetiology of brain lateralization in general, and prosopagnosia are also discussed.