Perspective Taking

Selman and Byrne (1974) investigated stages in the development of perspective taking. Selman posed a number of questions to young children and adolescents (P's) involving a central character.

Using the answers Ps gave he developed a 5 stage model to describe the development of perspective taking, based on age and maturity.

Undifferentiated (3-6 years) - they recognise that themself and others have different thoughts and feelings, but can become confused

Social-informational (5-9 years) - they can understand that other perspectives can arise because everyone has access to different info, another persons perspectives may not be the same as their own.

Self-reflective (7-12 years) - the first empathetic perspective as they can see, think, feel from another persons perspective. Also aware that others can do the same.

Third party (10-15 years) - a decentrated view in the emotional sense; they can see a situation from the 1st, 2nd and neutral perspective.

Societal (14+ years) - understands that the 3rd party perspective can by influenced by the societal and cultural context of the bystander

Reliability and Validaty - Keller and Edelstein (1991) carried out a longitudinal study with over 100 P's aged 7-15. They found that P's responses did reflect Selmans stages. This gives reliability to the stages. The reliability of the stages also means that they are more likely to be valid.

Individual differences - the theory attempts to take account of ID in childrens perspective taking at the ages within each stage overlap. This allows for the possibility that children progress and develop at different rates and therefore acknowledges that children of the same age may show different levels of perspective taking.

Application - The theory offers useful practical applications. O'Keefe and Johnston (1989) carried out research into perspective taking and teacher effectiveness, They highlighted that an important factor in the development of perspective taking is teacher responsiveness to this child.

No cause and effect - Much of the evidence is correlational e.g. Selman as well as research which found that children raised is chronically dysfunctional families show worse PT abilities than control groups. This means that it is hard to say whether being part of a dysfunctional family causes poor PT or whether some other factor is involved.