The Impact of Self-construal on Visual Perspective Taking :A Preliminary fMRI Study

Abstract

Visual perspective taking is an ability that imagines the viewpoint of the other person and it may be influenced by the self-construal a self-concept which defines the self other and the relationship between self and other This study investigated the impact of self-construal on visual perspective taking and the brain activity involved Twenty-nine participants were recruited and assigned by single self-construal (IND/INTER) and dual self-construal (high or low IND+INTER) according to their score on each dimension in the Self-Construal Scale (SCS) While scanning their brain activity they performed the modified version of director task which included two situations of visual perspective taking including choose the target object (situation: OBJ) and judge the direction of the object (situation: DIR) according to the position of the director The t-test analysis demonstrated that low IND has better performance in visual perspective taking and has lower activation in the primary motor cortex and cingulate gyrus compared with high IND However the high IND group were response faster on the self-perspective in DIR and have higher activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus By using the dual self-construal grouping the ANOVA reported a significant group effect in the accuracy of visual perspective taking in OBJ and response time of self-perspective taking condition in DIR The post hoc revealed a similar pattern with single dimension grouping but different brain activation pattern the result was discussed

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Rwei-Ling Yu (Supervisor)