In recent years, there has been a heated debate about how to interpret findings that seem to show that humans rapidly and automatically calculate the visual perspectives of others. In the current study, we investigated the question of whether automatic interference effects found in the dot-perspective task (Samson, Apperly, Braithwaite, Andrews, & Bodley Scott, 2010) are the product of domain-specific perspective-taking processes or of domain-general “submentalizing” processes (Heyes, 2014). Previous attempts to address this question have done so by implementing inanimate controls, such as arrows, as stimuli. The rationale for this is that submentalizing processes that respond to directionality should be engaged by such stimuli, whereas domain-specific perspective-taking mechanisms, if they exist, should not. These previous attempts have been limited, however, by the implied intentionality of the stimuli they have used (e.g. arrows), which may have invited participants to imbue them with perspectival agency. Drawing inspiration from “novel entity” paradigms from infant gaze-following research, we designed a version of the dot-perspective task that allowed us to precisely control whether a central stimulus was viewed as animate or inanimate. Across four experiments, we found no evidence that automatic “perspective-taking” effects in the dot-perspective task are modulated by beliefs about the animacy of the central stimulus. Our results also suggest that these effects may be due to the task-switching elements of the dot-perspective paradigm, rather than automatic directional orienting. Together, these results indicate that neither the perspective-taking nor the standard submentalizing interpretations of the dot-perspective task are fully correct.

近年来，关于如何解释似乎表明人类能够快速自动计算他人视觉观点的研究结果一直存在激烈争论。在当前的研究中，我们调查了在点透视任务中发现的自动干扰效应（Samson、Apperly、Braithwaite、Andrews 和 Bodley Scott，2010 年）是特定领域透视过程的产物还是领域的产物。 - 一般的“潜意识化”过程（Heyes，2014）。以前解决这个问题的尝试是通过将无生命的控件（例如箭头）作为刺激来实现的。这样做的基本原理是，响应方向性的潜意识化过程应该受到这种刺激的影响，而特定领域的观点采择机制（如果存在）则不应。然而，这些先前的尝试受到他们使用的刺激（例如箭头）的隐含意图的限制，这可能会邀请参与者向他们灌输透视能力。从婴儿注视跟踪研究的“新实体”范式中汲取灵感，我们设计了一个点透视任务的版本，使我们能够精确控制中央刺激被视为有生命还是无生命。在四个实验中，我们没有发现任何证据表明点透视任务中的自动“透视”效应是由对中央刺激的活力的信念调节的。我们的结果还表明，这些影响可能是由于点透视范式的任务切换元素，而不是自动定向。一起，