Age and Culture on Spontaneous Perspective Taking

An extension of the Theory of Mind (ToM) known as "spontaneous perspective taking" has been described by several authors. In this process, another person's visual perspective is calculated both "rapidly" and "spontaneously. Visuospatial perspective-taking is essential to comprehending others' visual perspectives. Like perspective-taking, it's essential for communication, empathy, and conflict resolution. This capacity helps understand other cultures, reduce bias, and encourage creative problem-solving and teamwork. Leadership and education are gained from personal growth and adaptable skills. It also fosters empathy and connectivity through shared visual experiences, promoting harmony. Consequently, the present study aimed to measure the spontaneous perspective-taking ability of younger and older adults and the effect of cultural differences on it from three different nations: Turkish, Italian, and Belgian. 201 total participants were involved in an online experiment. 4 different task types were used to measure the ability: Dots, numbers, objects, and stripes task. Two conditions were used, speech bubble and normal, and stripe task was used to measure if static movement could elicit spontaneous perspective-taking. The interpersonal Reactivity Index was used in order to measure participants' empathy levels and their correlation with tasks. The results indicated that younger and older adults did not differ in their spontaneous perspective-taking ability. Italian and Turkish samples have significantly differed and the Turkish sample has been found more egocentric in comparison with the Italian sample. Speech bubbles and normal conditions did not differ. In the sense of task type, only stripe task has differed and has elicited participants' spontaneous perspective-taking ability. Some Items of IRI have been positively and negatively correlated with younger and older adults' Spontaneous Perspective-taking. Overall, age did not have an impact and our study can have limitations. Future studies with more advanced experiment designs could shed light on this issue.