Perspective taking in referring to objects behind versus in front of an observer: Frames of reference, intraindividual consistency, and response latencies

Abstract

Speakers of English and German typically adopt the reflection variant of the relative frame of reference (FoR) in order to describe how nonoriented objects that are located in front of them are related to one another. Little is known, however, about how they proceed in dorsal settings, with objects located in their back. In this article, we explore the turn hypothesis, which assumes a (mental) 180° turn of the observer to face the objects, converting the dorsal into a frontal situation, so that the preferred FoR variant for frontal settings can be applied. To elicit spatial references, we used photographs that showed an observer and two objects either in the observer's visual field (frontal condition) or in the observer's back (dorsal condition). The observer was looking either in the same direction as the referencing individual (aligned perspectives) or in the opposite direction (vis-à-vis perspective). Data from two experiments show that while participants do adopt the observer's perspective, their references in dorsal settings are incompatible with the turn hypothesis. Analyses of response latencies indicate additional cognitive costs for establishing a FoR for the very first item in the dorsal condition as compared to the frontal condition, but fast adaption for subsequent items, and high intraindividual consistency in FoR choice in both conditions. Maintaining the assumption that references in dorsal settings should be compatible with the variant of the relative FoR adopted in frontal settings, participants’ references can be explained by assuming a backward projection that gets by without a (mental) turn of the observer.

Keywords:

• Spatial cognition
• Perspective taking
• Frontal and dorsal references
• Frame of reference (FoR)
• Variants of the relative frame of reference

Notes

¹The following nomenclature is used throughout the paper: The term orientation refers to the type of setting (frontal vs. dorsal), gaze alignment relates the gaze of the referencing participant to the gaze of the depicted observer (aligned = identical gaze directions vs. vis-à-vis = opposed gaze directions), perspective combines orientation and gaze alignment, object array refers to the spatial relation between figure object and ground object, and configuration refers to an object array combined with a perspective.

² Small caps are used to indicate response categories; FoRs are always reported from the point of view of the depicted observer.

³This resulted in 11 exclusions in the first item block (5 in the frontal condition and 6 in the dorsal condition), and 13 exclusions in the second item block (7 in the frontal condition and 6 in the dorsal condition).

⁴The first part of that study was concerned with causal attributions in simple physical scenarios and was completed in about 30 minutes.

⁵This resulted in 4 exclusions in the first item block (all in the frontal condition), and 7 exclusions in the second item block (3 in the frontal condition and 4 in the dorsal condition).

⁶Please note that when frontal and dorsal blocks are analysed separately, the general pattern remains similar.

⁷But see Tversky, Lee, and Mainwaring (1999) and Tversky and Hard (2009) for arguments that in a communicative context switching rather than sticking to perspectives/FoRs may reduce cognitive costs.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG through a Heisenberg Fellowship to A. Bender [grant number Be 2451/8-1/2], and a grant for the project Spatial referencing across languages: Cultural preferences and cognitive implications to A. Bender [grant number Be 2451/13-1] and S. Beller [grant number Be 2178/7-1].