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How the brain memorizes the world from others' perspectives: investigating allocentric encoding of object features
Nanbo Wang1, Shuo Huang2, Junyang Cai2
1Department of Psychology, School of Health, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, 350122, China. wangnb@fjmu.edu.cn.
BMC Psychology
|July 2, 2025
Summary
When adopting another's perspective, memory encoding depends on feature distinctiveness. Individuals may automatically memorize irrelevant object details allocentrically or selectively encode features based on task demands.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Social Cognition
- Human Perception
Background:
- Understanding others' perspectives is crucial for social interaction.
- Effective memory encoding from another's viewpoint is key to this understanding.
- The extent and manner of memorizing object information from an allocentric perspective remain unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how individuals memorize object information when adopting another's perspective.
- To determine if all object features are memorized allocentrically or only specific ones.
- To explore the mechanisms of memory encoding during perspective-taking.
Main Methods:
- A novel paradigm integrating change-detection and perspective-taking tasks was employed.
- 226 undergraduates participated in four behavioral experiments.
- Participants memorized target features from an avatar's perspective, with irrelevant features manipulated to assess encoding.
Main Results:
- Two encoding mechanisms were identified: object-based (automatic allocentric encoding of irrelevant features) and feature-based (selective encoding).
- Encoding strategy depends on the discriminability of task-irrelevant dimensions.
- Object-based encoding occurs with high discriminability; feature-based encoding with low discriminability.
Conclusions:
- Individuals employ a "coarse-to-fine" principle for memorizing object features during perspective-taking.
- Allocentric memorization of irrelevant information occurs during embodied perspective-taking.
- Encoding mechanisms differ from alternative strategies like object rotation.
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