Visual perspective taking (VPT) is an integral part of social interactions. While the mechanisms of VPT have been extensively explored in human–human interactions, only a handful of studies have investigated the mechanisms that enable humans to also take the perspective of robots. Previous work has proposed that human-like visual features trigger VPT (mere-appearance hypothesis). In this study, we investigate the boundary conditions of the mere-appearance hypothesis in four experiments in a dot-matching task. We show that not only human-like visual features trigger VPT but that a camera also triggers VPT. Non-human animal-like features, conversely, do not result in VPT. We thus suggest that not only human-like visual features but also an object that is associated with an implied social presence (a camera) can trigger VPT whereas this is not the case for non-human animal-like features. These findings further extend earlier work on the mere-appearance hypothesis and are informative for designing social robots.

视觉视角采择（VPT）是社交互动的一个组成部分。虽然 VPT 的机制在人与人的互动中得到了广泛的探索，但只有少数研究调查了使人类也能从机器人的角度来看的机制。之前的工作提出，类人视觉特征会触发VPT（纯粹外观假说）。在本研究中，我们在点匹配任务的四个实验中研究了单纯外观假设的边界条件。我们证明，不仅类人视觉特征会触发 VPT，而且相机也会触发 VPT。相反，非人类动物特征不会导致 VPT。因此，我们认为不仅类人视觉特征，而且与隐含社会存在相关的物体（相机）都可以触发 VPT，而非类人动物特征则不然。这些发现进一步扩展了早期关于单纯外观假设的研究，并且为设计社交机器人提供了信息。