Thank Me With TEA!

Altercentric Cognition

Resources

Important

  • Aperture Task and Hoop Task – These paradigms are used to measure passability, which is the point at which a person starts rotating their shoulders. This provides an embodied measure of distance estimation, not merely an external estimation.
  • Proprioceptive Drift – This is the perceived distance a participant estimates between their real hand and the location of the rubber hand in the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) task. It is considered a more reliable measure of embodiment compared to explicit judgments because it is a “pure sensory estimate” and less affected by top-down influences, judgments, or expectations.
  • Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) – This illusion is classically used to study multisensory integration because the illusion occurs when the brain integrates synchronous visual and tactile information. In anorexia patients, RHI studies show they have greater proprioceptive drift compared to controls, indicating greater embodiment of the fake hand.

Core concepts

  • Altercentric – This term means “other-centered” and contrasts with the egocentric (self-related) mode of perception and cognition. It is used to describe the effect that the mere presence of another agent has on an individual’s information processing.
  • Altercentric effects – These are influences on cognition caused by the presence of others. The most interesting observation is that these effects are ubiquitous and occur even when the presence of others is completely irrelevant to the individual’s solitary task or goal.
  • Automatic representation of actions of others – A hardwired mechanism where observing others’ actions automatically represents them in one’s own motor system, potentially interfering with concurrent actions. This representation is hypothesized to cause interference in tasks where observed actions are incongruent with required actions.
  • Automatic gaze following – A hardwired mechanism causing the mind to prioritize the stimuli attended to or experienced by other people. This is hypothesized to serve as an evolutionary mechanism for culture formation.
  • Co-witnessing/Joint Attention – The act of sharing the perception of a stimulus with another agent. Research shows that co-witnessing a stimulus enhances detection performance and improves working memory for that stimulus.
  • Culture Formation (Altercentrism link) – This hypothesis suggests that mechanisms for prioritizing stimuli experienced by others—such as automatic gaze following and perspective taking—evolved to facilitate the acquisition of shared memories and knowledge, which is essential for establishing shared beliefs, values, and attitudes.
  • N170 ERP component – This Event-Related Potential component is face-specific (larger for faces than other stimuli). It exhibits a larger amplitude for inverted faces compared to upright faces, believed to reflect greater resource engagement for feature processing when configurational priors cannot be applied.
  • Egocentric interference (Intrusions) – This occurs when an individual’s own perspective interferes with making judgments based on the perspective of another person.
  • Altercentric interference (Intrusions) – This occurs when an individual experiences difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective of another person, particularly when the two perspectives are in conflict, leading to worse performance.
  • Discounting Perspective – Research shows that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when the avatar present is a child, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective.
  • Body Matrix – A supramodal body representation that results from the integration of various forms of sensory input, including visual, proprioceptive, tactile, and motor predictions, interacting within the environment.
  • Proprioception – The sensation or awareness of the location of one’s limbs relative to the rest of the body. This ability allows actions like clapping hands behind one’s back without visual feedback.

Theories and Frameworks

  • Traditional cognitive science – The foundational premise is that cognition is understood through representational structures and computational procedures realized solely by brain processes.
  • 4E approach to cognition – A framework asserting that cognition does not occur solely in the head, acknowledging that it is embodied, extended, enacted, and embedded.
  • Embodied cognition – Cognition is determined or strongly influenced by the physical aspects and constraints of the body.
  • Extended cognition – The cognitive system is considered to extend beyond the brain and the physical body, incorporating tools and external resources.
  • Enacted cognition – Cognition is action-related and action-oriented, striving to accomplish specific evolutionary goals, such as those discussed in action-specific perception.
  • Embedded cognition – Cognition is afforded and constrained by ongoing interactions between the body and the environment, which often includes the social environment.
  • Predictive Coding Explanation (for AN anomalies) – This perspective explains sensory anomalies in disorders like anorexia by suggesting they stem from very strong, top-down priors (beliefs) that are highly resistant to sensory updating, overriding contradictory external evidence.
  • Mere-appearance hypothesis (VPT) – Proposes that automatic visual perspective taking can be triggered by human-likeness alone, regardless of whether mental capacity is attributed to the agent.
  • Mind-perception hypothesis (VPT) – Proposes that automatic visual perspective taking depends on attributing human-like mental capacities that enable the agent to perceive an object.

Notable Individuals

  • Albert Newen, Leon De Bruin, Shaun Gallagher: Editors of The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition.
  • Andy Clark and David Chalmers: Proposed the influential idea of extended cognition.
  • S. Spengler et al. and S.K. Kang et al.: Conducted studies demonstrating automatic motor representation and neural responses (FRN) to observed errors in others.
  • A. Böckler and J. Zwickel: Demonstrated that spontaneous perspective taking influences face processing, causing N170 enhancement based on the other’s viewpoint.
  • T. Seow and S.M. Fleming: Showed that an observer’s perceptual sensitivity is modulated and increased when an avatar co-witnesses a stimulus.
  • S.E.A. Gregory and M.C. Jackson: Showed that joint attention enhances memory, but only when the cueing person could actually see the item (barrier open condition).
  • H. Ferguson et al. and B. Wahn et al.: Conducted studies investigating how avatar features (age, human-likeness, capacity switch) affect the magnitude of altercentric interference.