Perspective-Taking in Adult Monolinguals and Multilinguals

Humans excel in cooperative communication, showcasing a remarkable ability to efficiently navigate misunderstandings through pragmatic competence, which involves understanding the context and the knowledge states of their interlocutors. Seminal research by Keysar et al. (2000) and Epley et al. (2004) has highlighted the indispensable role of perspective-taking in effective communication, enabling individuals to adjust their initial self-centred interpretations to better align with the context. This has sparked an inquiry into whether multilingual individuals possess superior perspective-taking abilities compared to monolinguals. This dissertation explores the faculty of spatial perspective-taking among adult monolinguals and multilinguals. The study adopts and modifies the director’s task, as originally conceived by Keysar et al. (2000), for its experimental framework. Participants are engaged with a task involving a 4x4 grid filled with objects and a corresponding picture of the target grid arrangement. Their challenge is to guide a counterpart, who views the grid from an inverted left/right perspective, to rearrange the objects to match the target grid. This setup critically tests the participants’ executive control, necessitating the suppression of egocentric biases and the accommodation of the counterpart’s perspective. Findings from this investigation reveal that multilinguals demonstrate superior accuracy compared to monolinguals across both reproduction and verbal guidance tasks. The study also delves into potential limitations that might obscure the multilingual advantage in perspective-taking, such as the effects of training and external variables.