Selman's levels of perspective taking

• Define social cognitions.

  mental processes we use in social interactions to decide how to behave
• Distinguish between physical and social perspective taking.

  physical = understanding what someone else sees

  social = understanding what someone is thinking/feeling
• True or false - Selman was domain general.

  False
• What scenario did Selman use to develop his stages of perspective taking and how many children were used in his research?

  The Holly scenario

  20 4 year olds, 20 5 year olds and 20 6 year olds
• Name Selman's stages and give the ages they occur at.

  0 = socially egocentric (3-6 years)

  1 = social information role-taking (6-8 years)

  2 = self-reflective role-taking (8-10 years)

  3 = mutual role-taking (10-12 years)

  4 = social and conventional role-taking (12+ years)
• Describe stage 0 of Selman's stages - socially egocentric

  cannot distinguish between own and others emotions

  can identify others emotions but not understand where they came from
• Describe stage 1 of Selman's stages.

  understand different people have different perspectives and know this is due to them having different info. Can only focus on 1 perspective.
• Describe stage 2 of Selman's stages.

  can put themselves in another's position and appreciate their perspective but still only 1 at a time.
• Describe stage 3 of Selman's stages.

  can look at a 2 person situations from the pov of an objective 3rd person

  multiple povs at same time
• Describe stage 4 of Selman's stages.

  understand perspective can be influenced by societal/cultural values

  sometimes understanding others viewpoints is insufficient to reach agreement so social conventions are needed to keep order
• How did Selman say children progress through his stages?

  maturity and experience
• What are the 3 later developments to Selman's theory and describe their meaning.

  1) interpersonal understanding = take different roles to understand social situations

  2) interpersonal negotiation strategies = as well as understanding we need to develop skills like assertion and managing conflict

  3) awareness of personal meaning of relationships = reflect on behaviour in context of life history and relationships
• Which 3 people added the later developments to Selman's theory?

  Schultz, Selman and La Russo
• Who provided evidence that perspective taking increases with age?

  Gurucharri and Selman
• Describe the mixed evidence for the importance of perspective taking.

  For = Buijzen and Valkenburg found negative correlation between it and coercive behaviour

  Against = Gasser and Keller found bullies have no problem with it
• Describe Marton et als study.

  Children with ADHD (50 8-12 year olds) did worse than controls on perspective taking tasks
• Which culture did Wu and Keysar find were better at perspective taking than American's?

  Chinese
• Social cognition – describes the mental processes we make use of when engaged in a social interaction. E.g., we make decisions on how to behave based on our understanding of a social situation. Both the understanding and the decision making are cognitive processes
• Perspective-taking – our ability to appreciate a social situation from the perspective (point of view) of other people. This cognitive ability underlies much of our normal social interaction. Referred to specifically as ‘social  perspective-taking’ or also called ‘role taking’ because we take on the role of another and therefore their perspective.
• domain-general versus domain-specific

  Selman 1971, 1976 was concerned with how children develop perspective taking – social perspective-taking. It is different from Piaget’s idea of physical perspective-taking (egocentrism), demonstrated with the 3 mountains task. Social perspective-taking concerns what someone else is thinking or feeling i.e. social cognition.

  Selman 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 1971 looked at changes that occurred with age in children’s responses to scenarios in which they were asked to take on the role of different people in a social situation.
• Findings – a number of distinct levels of perspective-taking were identified. Selman found that the level of perspective-taking correlated with age, suggested a clear developmental sequence
• Procedure – 30 boys, 30 girls took part in the study à 20 x 4yr olds, 20 x 5yr olds, 20 x 6yr olds. All were individually given a task designed to measure perspective-taking ability. This involved asking them how each person felt in each scenario.

  One scenario was a child called Holly who had promised her father that she would no longer climb trees, but then comes across a friend whose kitten is stuck up a tree. The task was to describe how each person (Holly, her friends and her father) would feel if Holly did or did not climb the tree to rescue the kitten.
• Later developments to Selman’s theory

  Selman recognised that stages of cognitive reasoning do not fully explain social development.
• 1.Interpersonal understanding – this is what Selman measured in his earlier research. Being able to take different roles is evidence that we understand social situations 2.Interpersonal negotiate strategies – we also have to develop skills in how to respond to the social situation. This could include learning to negotiate and manage conflict. 3.Awareness of personal meaning of relationships – in addition to understanding and managing social situations we also need to  be able to reflect on social behaviour in the context of life history and the full range of relationships.
• •Stage 0 (3-6 years) egocentric – a child cannot distinguish between their own emotions and those of others nor explain the emotional states of others.
• •Stage 1 (6-8 years) social-informational – a child can now tell the difference between their own point of view and that of others but they can only focus on one of these perspectives.
• •Stage 2 (8-10 years) self-reflective – at this stage a child can put themselves in the position of another person and fully appreciate the other’s perspective, but can still only focus on one point of view at a time.
• •Stage 3  (10-12 years) mutual role-taking – children are now able to look at a situation from their own and another's point of view at the same time.
• •Stage 4 (12 years +) social and conventional system -  young people become more able to see that sometimes understanding others view points is not enough to allow people to reach agreement. This is why social conventions are needed to keep order.

  Selman believed that development through these stages is based on both maturity and experience.
• One strength is that there is strong research evidence

  Selman 1971, found positive correlations between age and the ability to take different perspectives. This is supported by longitudinal follow-up studies (e.g., Gurucharri and -Selman 1982) which confirm that perspective-taking develops with age. This is a strength of the levels idea generally, particularly as it is supported by a range of evidence.
• +Ve is the theory helps understand some atypical development.

  Marton 2009 compared 8-12 year old children diagnosed with ADHD with control group, looking at performance on perspective taking tasks. They found those with ADHD did worse on scenario understanding. The ADHD group did worse on identifying the feelings of each person involved + evaluating the consequences of different actions. Means that research has identified a key social cognitive deficit in this group of people, supporting usefulness of the theory in helping to ultimately intervene and support people with atypical development.
• A strength is support for learning perspective-taking through experience.

  Wu and Keysar 2007 found that young adult Chinese participants did significantly better in perspective-taking than matched Americans. This indicated that the development of perspective-taking is influenced by socio-cultural inputs and not maturity. This supports Selman’s assumption that both maturity level and the social environment contribute to perspective taking-development.
• One limitation is mixed evidence as to how important perspective-taking is.

  Buijzne and Valkenburg 2008 found a negative correlation between age, perspective-taking and coercive behaviour. This suggests that perspective-taking is important in developing prosocial behaviour. However, Gasser and Keller 2009 found that bullies displayed no difficulties in perspective taking. We cannot therefore conclude from such mixed evidence that perspective taking enables socially desirable behaviour.
• Another limitation is only one aspect of social development is considered.

  Selman's theory looks only at cognitive factors whereas children’s social development involves more than their developing cognitive abilities. For example, internal factors (e.g., empathy) and external factors (e.g., family atmosphere) are important and it is likely social development is due to a combination of these. Therefore, it can be argued that to consider the one element of perspective-taking in isolation gives and oversimplified account of social development.