abstract Dana Samson

Dana Samson (Université Catholique de Louvain)

How and when do we compute what other people see?

Understanding what other people see plays a crucial role in our social interactions. It provides valuable information to understand other people’s desires, intentions, knowledge and beliefs. I will present the empirical evidence from a programme of research investigating which types of stimuli and situations “afford” the computation of what other people see. I will address the question of automaticity, the distinction between perspective calculation versus perspective selection, the distinction between level 1 versus level 2 visual perspective taking (i.e., computing "whether" something is seen versus "how" something is seen) and the distinction between 2nd person and 3rd person perspective (i.e., computing someone else’s perspective when one is a simple observer versus when one is actively involved in a task with the other).