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# Is implicit Level-2 visual perspective-taking embodied? Spontaneous perceptual simulation of others' perspectives is not impaired by motor restriction

## Details

**Authors** Ward et al.

**Year** 2022

**Publisher** Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

**Discipline** Cognitive Science

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218221077102) 
10.1177/17470218221077102

## In authors' words

### Abstract

Visual perspective taking may rely on the ability to mentally rotate one’s own body into that of another. Here, we test whether participants’ ability to make active body movements plays a causal role in visual perspective taking. We utilised our recent task that measures whether participants spontaneously represent another’s visual perspective in a (quasi-)perceptual format that can drive own perceptual decision making. Participants reported whether alphanumeric characters, presented in different orientations, are shown in their normal or mirror-inverted form (e.g., “R” vs. “Я”). Between trials, we manipulated whether another person was sitting either left or right of the character and whether participants’ movement was restricted with a chinrest or whether they could move freely. As in our previous research, participants spontaneously took the visual perspective of the other person, recognising rotated letters more rapidly when they appeared upright to the other person in the scene, compared with when they faced away from that person, and these effects increased with age but were (weakly) negatively related to schizotypy and not to autistic traits or social skills. Restricting participants’ ability to make active body movements did not influence these effects. The results, therefore, rule out that active physical movement plays a causal role in computing another’s visual perspective, either to create alignment between own and other’s perspective or to trigger perspective taking processes. The postural adjustments people sometimes make when making judgements from another’s perspective may instead be a bodily consequence of mentally transforming one’s actual to an imagined position in space.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To test whether implicit visual perspective-taking depends on embodied motor simulation — mentally rotating one's own body into the other's position — by restricting the movements such a simulation would require.

### What they found (results)

Participants judged whether rotated characters were normal or mirror-inverted while another person sat to the left or right. They recognised characters faster when those appeared upright from the other person's vantage — and this spontaneous perspective shift persisted undiminished when head and body movement were restricted by a chin rest.

## Commentary

### In short

People spontaneously represent how a scene looks from another agent's location, so adopting that vantage (point) determines the computed appearance (view).

**Patterns it shows** P

**Added** 2026-08-01

**How to cite this** Ward et al. (2022). Is implicit Level-2 visual perspective-taking embodied? Spontaneous perceptual simulation of others' perspectives is not impaired by motor restriction. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.