The effect of social and non-social prompts on implicit mentalising in the dot perspective task

Background In the dot perspective taking task – a task commonly used to assess implicit mentalizing - participants are typically slower in judging how many dots they see when there is a difference in the number of dots seen by themselves and a centrally placed avatar than when both perspectives align. This finding has been termed the ‘altercentric interference’ effect and taken as evidence that participants spontaneously and automatically compute the avatar’s perspective. In this study, we focus on one line of critiques regarding the interpretation that the altercentric interference effect is automatic, namely by assessing whether the effect is purely stimulus-driven. Specifically, we tested the proposal that for the altercentric interference effect to emerge, participants must first focus their attention to the avatar, which then directs their attention to the dots and that this is achieved by a social word prompt (typically ‘YOU’) inducing a social mindset that then draws the participants’ attention to the avatar once the avatar and the dots appear. Methods We tested two groups of participants: one with a ‘YOU’ prompt and one with a non-social ‘NOW’ prompt. The semantics of both prompts were irrelevant because information about the colour of the dots participants needed to judge was presented through the ink colour of the prompt, not its text. Results Our results revealed no statistically significant difference in the altercentric interference effect between groups and our exploratory analyses showed that this was due to the altercentric interference effect being present in both groups. Conclusions Our findings do not provide empirical support for the hypothesis that the word prompt used in typical dot perspective tasking tasks promotes a social mindset that leads to the altercentric interference effect, however they may be aligned with the hypothesis that the effect requires participants’ attention to be drawn to the avatar.