Teachers' Visuospatial Perspective-Taking Has A Different Impact On Affective And Cognitive Empathy

Teacher empathy is not only the core component of teacher's professional quality,but also an important factor to promote its formation.Perspective-taking(PT)is an important factor affecting teacher empathy,but relatively little is known about how PT affects teacher empathy.Compared with social PT,visuospatial PT(vsPT)has a clearer mechanism and is easier to manipulate.Therefore,present study attempts to investigate the mechanism of the influence of PT on teacher empathy from the perspective of vsPT.A general survey of the research on teacher empathy and PT shows that vsPT not only contains the same component self-representation inhibition as other PT,but also contains different component egocentric visuospatial transformation.Empathy measured by personalized anchoring paradigm can be promoted by egocentric visuospatial transformation.Therefore,vsPT may be an important variable affecting teacher empathy.However,to further investigate the relationship between vsPT and empathy among teachers,these following problems still need to be solved.Firstly,the experimental paradigm of judging left and right spatial positions has low ecological validity for teachers,which is difficult to be directly applied in teacher research.Secondly,personalized anchoring paradigm does not distinguish between affective and cognitive empathy,the applicability of the results cannot be determined.Finally,previous studies have not determined whether the effect of vsPT on empathy is egocentric visuospatial transformation or self-representation inhibition.Based on above three questions,two experiments are designed in present study.Experiment 1 investigated whether the promotion effect of vsPT on empathy could be reflected among teachers and applied to both affective empathy and cognitive empathy.Univariate within-subjects design was used in experiment 1,and the independent variable was the stimulus location(wall or table).It is necessary to perform egocentric visuospatial transformation when taking stimulus on table.While taking stimulus on wall,it is not necessary.Participants(N=113),aged between 21and 55 years(M=37.103,SD=7.95),volunteered to complete a computer-assisted(E-prime 2.0)Multifaceted Empathy Test(MET).Results showed that,for affective empathy,participants showed higher ratings of affective states after taking perspective on desk(M=6.48,SD=1.49)relative to perspective on wall(M=6.36,SD=1.47),t(200)=2.74,p<0.01,d=0.08.As for cognitive empathy,participants showed higher accuracy after taking visual perspective on desk(M=0.72,SD=0.15)relative to perspective on wall(M=0.61,SD=0.16),t(200)=7.50,p<0.001,d=0.66.Experiment 2 separated two important components in vsPT to investigate the effect of egocentric visuospatial transformation and self-representation inhibition on teacher empathy.2 stimulus location(wall or table)×2 stimulus type(inconsistent or consistent)within-subjects design was used in experiment 2.We manipulated egocentric visuospatial transformation by stimulus location the same as experimental1 and self-representation inhibition by stimulus type.Participants need to perform higher self-representation inhibition when taking inconsistent stimulus.While consistent stimulus,the lower.Participants(N=113),aged between 24 and 56 years(M=36.18,SD=6.30),volunteered to complete MET the same as experimental 1.Results showed that,for affective empathy,the analysis yielded a significant main effect of stimulus location,F(1,96)=6.01,p<0.05,?_p~2=0.06 and type,F(1,96)=61.83,p<0.001,?_p~2=0.39.Participants showed higher ratings of affective states after taking perspective on desk(M=6.92,SD=1.20)relative to perspective on wall(M=6.80,SD=1.18).Participants showed higher ratings of affective states after taking inconsistent perspective(M=7.07,SD=1.10)relative to consistent perspective(M=6.65,SD=1.28).As for cognitive empathy,the analysis yielded a significant main effect of stimulus location,F(1,96)=10.74,p<0.01,?_p~2=0.10 and type,F(1,96)=4.18,p<0.05,?_p~2=0.04.Participants showed higher accuracy after taking perspective on desk(M=0.62,SD=0.11)relative to perspective on wall(M=0.67,SD=0.10).Participants showed higher accuracy after taking inconsistent perspective(M=0.66,SD=0.09)relative to consistent perspective(M=0.63,SD=0.09).The interaction between stimulus location and type were significant F(1,96)=94.08,p<0.001,?_p~2=0.50.Simple-effects tests revealed that participants showed higher accuracy after taking visual perspective on desk relative to perspective on wall under inconsistent condition(p<0.001).While the analysis revealed an inverse pattern of visuospatial perspective-taking on cognitive empathy under consistent condition(p<0.001).We drew several conclusions as follows:(1)Teacher?s affective empathy can be promoted by vsPT not only through egocentric visuospatial transformation,but also through self-representation inhibition.(2)Teachers'cognitive empathy can be promoted by vsPT only through self-representation inhibition.Under the condition of high self-representation inhibition can egocentric visuospatial transformation promote cognitive empathy.(3)Teachers'cognitive empathy can be reduced by vsPT only through egocentric visuospatial transformation.Our results suggest that teachers'self-representation inhibition is vital for effect of vsPT on empathy,which provide evidence for The Self to Other Model of Empathy.And the role of egocentric visuospatial transformation may support the Embodied Simulation Theory.The findings of this study are of great significance to the research on teacher empathy intervention through perspective-taking.