Séminaire LICAÉ : Malika Auvray

Information can be perceived from a multiplicity of spatial perspectives, which answer different requirements. On the one hand, adopting a first-person (or egocentred) perspective is crucial to integrating different stimuli across sensory modalities and central for the unity of the self. On the other hand, adopting a third-person (or decentred) perspective is necessary for understanding external space and communicating spatial knowledge with others. How do we juggle these two requirements? The graphesthesia task we developed allows investigating people’s ability to flexibly change spatial perspectives. In this talk I will review the set of study we conducted investigating how people differ in the spatial perspectives they naturally adopt as well as their ability to flexibly change spatial perspectives. In particular, I will highlight how perspective taking varies as a function of 1) sensory parameters (such as visual and somatosensory deficits), 2) social cognition (such as social intelligence and anxiety), and 3) neuroatypical traits (such as autistic spectrum disorders and schizotypical traits).