Perspective taking

• What is social cognition?


  How we make decisions on how to act in social situations
• What is perspective taking?


  Our ability to understand a social situation from someone else’s point of view
• What are Selmans stages?

  Stage 0 - undifferentiated perspective taking

  Stage 1 - social informational perspective taking

  Stage 2 - self-reflective perspective taking

  Stage 3 - mutual perspective taking

  Stage 4 - societal perspective taking
• What happens in the undifferentiated perspective taking stage?


  Can distinguish between themselves and others, but governed by their own perspective. Can identify others emotional states but not what caused them
• What is the social informational perspective taking stage?


  Aware that others perspectives are different to their own but only because they have different information to them. Can only focus on one perspective at a time
• What is the self-reflective perspective taking stage?


  Children can put themselves in another persons perspective and understand others do not think and feel as they do
• What is mutual perspective taking?


  Being able to imagine a third person in a scenario. Can consider 2 viewpoints at a time
• What is the societal perspective taking stage?


  Decisions are made with reference to societal conventions
• What happens with perspective taking as age increases?

  We get better at perspective taking with age
• What did Selman say about PT and social development?


  Children poor at PT had more difficulty forming relationships and were less popular, suggesting PT is important for social development
• What did Gasser and Keller argue about PT and social development?


  Bullies have no issue with PT as they know they are hurting people. But it could be argued they have issues with social development, so PT is not needed for this
• What are the applications of perspective taking?

  Social skills training can teach criminals PT skill so they won’t harm others
• What did Marton find about ADHD and PT?


  Those with ADHD did worse on a PT task
• What did Keysar find about cultural differences?


  Chinese Ps did better at PT tasks than USA Ps, so culture affects ability to PT