Strategy modulates spatial perspective-taking: evidence for dissociable disembodied and embodied routes

Previous research provides evidence for a dissociable embodied route to spatial perspective-taking that is under strategic control. The present experiment investigated further the influence of strategy on spatial perspective-taking by assessing whether participants may also elect to employ a separable “disembodied” route loading on inhibitory control mechanisms. Participants(N=92)undertook both the “own body transformation”(OBT)perspective-taking task,requiring speeded spatial judgments made from the perspective of an observed figure,and a control task measuring ability to inhibit spatially compatible responses in the absence of a figure.Perspective-taking performance was found to be related to performance on the response inhibition control task,in that participants who tended to take longer to adopt a new perspective also tended to show a greater elevation in response times when inhibiting spatially compatible responses.This relationship was restricted to those participants reporting thatthey adopted the perspective of another by reversing left andright whenever confronted with a front-view figure;it was absent in those participants who reported perspective-taking by mentally transforming their spatial orientation to align with that of the figure.Combined with previously published results,these findings complete a double dissociation between embodied and disembodied routes to spatial perspective-taking,implying that spatial perspective-taking is subject to modulation by strategy,and suggesting that embodied routes to perspective-taking may place minimal demands on domain general executive functions.