selman's levels of perspective-taking (social cognition)

• domain-specific approach

  • disagreed with Piaget's domain-general approach to development and proposed that social perspective-taking develops separately from other aspects of cognitive development (domain-specific)
• perspective-taking research

  • Selman's assessment procedure involved asking children to take the perspective of different people in a social situation and consider how each person felt
  • one scenario:
  • child called Holly who has promised her father she will no longer climb trees, but who then comes across her friend whose kitten is stuck up a tree
  • the child participant was asked to explain how each person (Holly, her friend, her father) would feel if Holly did or did not climb the tree to rescue the kitten
• Selman's stage theory

  • found that children of different ages responded in different ways
  • he used these differences to build a stage theory of how thinking about social situations changes
  • children progressively see another person's perspective
  • the final stage focuses on social conventions
• stage 0 (3-6 yrs) Egocentric

  • a child cannot distinguish between their own emotions and those of others nor explain the emotional states of others
• stage 1 (6-8 yrs) social-informational

  • a child can now distinguish between their own point of view and that of others, but can only focus on one perspective at a time
• stage 2 (8-10 yrs) self-reflective

  • a child can explain the position of another person and appreciate their perspective but can still only consider one point of view at a time
• stage 3 (10-12 yrs) mutual

  • a child is now able to consider their own point of view and that of another at the same time
• stage 4 (12 yrs+) social and conventional system

  • a child recognises that understanding others' viewpoints is not enough to allow people to reach agreement - social conventions are needed to keep order
• Selman identified three key elements

  • interpersonal understanding = this is what Selman measured in his research
  • interpersonal negotiation strategies = having to develop other skills (eg learning to negotiate and manage conflict)
  • awareness of personal meaning of relationships = being able to relate social behaviour to the particular people we are interacting with
• strength = support for stages in perspective-taking

  • Selman = tested 60 children (aged 4-6) and found positive correlations between age and the ability to take different perspectives (cross-sectional study)
  • supported by longitudinal follow-up studies which confirm that perspective-taking develops with age
  • S's stages have support from different lines of research
• strength = support for importance of perspective taking

  • Buijzen and Valkenburg
  • observe child-parent interactions in shops when parents refused to buy things their child wanted
  • found negative correlations between both age/perspective-taking and coercive behaviour (ie trying to force parents to buy them things)
  • => there is a relationship between perspective-taking abilities and healthy social behaviour
• counterpoint for importance of perspective-taking

  • not all research supports the link between perspective-taking and social development
  • Gasser and Keller = found that bullies displayed no difficulties in perspective-taking, in fact scoring higher than victims
  • => perspective-taking may not be a key element in healthy social development
• limitation = stages are overly cognitive

  • S's theory looks only at cognitive factors, whereas children's social development involves more than just developing cognitive abilities
  • eg = internal factors (eg empathy) and external factors (eg family atmosphere) are important and it is likely social development is due to a combo of these
  • => S's approach to explaining perspective-taking is too narrow
• extra evaluation = nature vs nurture

  • comparison of American and matched Chinese children found that the Chinese children were significantly more advanced (suggests cultural influence)
  • BUT S believed that his stages of perspective-taking were based primarily on cognitive maturity and so universal
  • => may be an interaction between nurture and nature and perhaps S wrongly downplayed this