Cognitive, social and affective perspective taking: interrelations in preschool children

The study on the interrelations of perspective taking ability in different domains is presented. The theoretical background of the study is the theory of Perspectival Understanding of Mind (PUM; Perner, 2000). According to this theory, the core ability that develops in the 5th year of life and that underlies many tasks that children start to accomplish in that time, is an ability to understand and coordinate different perspectives. 120 children aged 3;6–5;6 participated in the study. The measures used to assess the perspective taking ability were as follows: Flexible Item Selection Task (FIST; Jacques and Zelazo, 2001) in the cognitive domain, Test Wiedzy o Emocjach (TWE; The Test of Emotion Knowledge; Stępień, 2007) in the affective domain and the classical false belief tests in the social domain. The results obtained suggest that after the fourth birthday children start to accomplish different tasks that demand perspective taking ability. However, the interrelations of perspective taking in different domains are differentiated, and they change in the preschool period.

Cognitive, social and affective perspective taking: interrelations in preschool children

The study on the interrelations of perspective taking ability in different domains is presented. The theoretical background of the study is the theory of Perspectival Understanding of Mind (PUM; Perner, 2000). According to this theory, the core ability that develops in the 5th year of life and that underlies many tasks that children start to accomplish in that time, is an ability to understand and coordinate different perspectives. 120 children aged 3;6–5;6 participated in the study. The measures used to assess the perspective taking ability were as follows: Flexible Item Selection Task (FIST; Jacques and Zelazo, 2001) in the cognitive domain, Test Wiedzy o Emocjach (TWE; The Test of Emotion Knowledge; Stępień, 2007) in the affective domain and the classical false belief tests in the social domain. The results obtained suggest that after the fourth birthday children start to accomplish different tasks that demand perspective taking ability. However, the interrelations of perspective taking in different domains are differentiated, and they change in the preschool period.