The Influence of Schizotypal Traits on Spatial and Emotional Perspective Taking
Résumé
The ability to adopt someone else’s perspective is at the core of social cognition. Perspective-taking encompasses a variety of cognitive processes involving the ability to infer others’ emotions or feelings (affective perspective-taking) and the ability to understand their visuo-spatial perception (spatial perspective-taking). Yet, the intricate relationship between perspective-taking dimensions remains to be unveiled. In particular, whether perspective-taking is a global or domain-specific mechanism would help understanding whether certain populations with deficits in one dimension (e.g., emotional perspective-taking) also face difficulties in another (e.g. spatial perspective-taking). In this online study conducted on 135 neurotypical participants, the Visual Graphesthesia Task and the Emotional Egocentricity Bias Task were used to investigate potential links between these dimensions. Schizotypal, empathic, and autistic traits were also measured through self-report questionnaires, as certain psychiatric conditions are known to affect either one or the other dimension of perspective-taking. Exploring participants’ trait profiles through interquartiles revealed significantly different biases in the spatial or in the emotional task, when comparing participants with the lowest and the highest schizotypal scores. Regression models confirmed these results, as schizotypal traits were found to be significantly predicted by the interaction existing between spatial and emotional egocentric biases. Therefore, the link between these two dimensions of perspective-taking may vary depending on psychiatric conditions, such as schizotypy. This opens the way to much needed systematic studies on the links between the numerous processes involved in perspective-taking in clinical populations characterized by deficits in perspective-taking.