Defining key concepts for mental state attribution.

The terminology used in discussions on mental state attribution is extensive and lacks consistency. In the current paper, experts from various disciplines collaborate to introduce a shared set of concepts and make recommendations regarding future use.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.