Evaluation

• Strength - research evidence

  Selman provided solid evidence that perspective-taking ability improves with age

  Longitudinal follow up studies (eg Gurucharri and Selman 1982) have shown that perspective-taking develops with age in each individual child

  This shows that his earlier research (Selman 1971) was not simply the result of individual differences in social-cognitive ability in different groups

  Selman's ideas are therefore based on solid research and supported by a range of studies
• Mixed evidence

  Evidence for Selman's ideas are much more mixed about how important the cognitive ability to take alternative perspectives is in understanding children's social development

  In an observation of child-parent interaction in stores - Buijzen and Valkenburg (2008) found a negative correlation between age, perspective-taking and coercive behaviour, i.e., trying to force parents to buy them things

  This suggests that perspective taking is important in developing prosocial behaviour, i.e. alternative to coercion

  However, Gasser and Keller (2009) found that bullies displayed no difficulties in perspective taking

  This is a problem for Selman's approach as it suggests perspective-taking may not be an important factor in the development of socially desirable behaviour
• Strength - Applications in understanding atypical development

  The development of the cognitive ability to take a range of perspectives appears to be important in atypical development

  Research has shown that children with ADHD and/or ASD have problems with perspective-taking

  Marton et al (2009) compared fifty 8-12 year old children with a diagnosis of ADHD with a control group on performance on perspective-taking tasks like those used by Selman

  Those with ADHD did worse on understanding the scenarios, identifying the feelings of each person involved and evaluating the consequences of different actions

  Selman's work is helpful in understanding atypical development