Cognition And Development: Selman's Level Of Perspective Taking.

Question 1

What Is Social Cognition?

Answer 1

• This describes the mental processes we use to make use of when engaged in social interaction.
• For example, 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.

Question 2

What Is Perspective Taking?

Answer 2

• Our ability to appreciate a social situation from the POV of other people.
• This cognitive ability underlies much our social interaction.

Question 3

Difference Between Piaget’s Theory And Selman’s Theory (Domain-General VS Domain-Specific).

Answer 3

• Piaget believed in domain-general cognitive development, so he believed that physical and social perspective-taking would occur hand in hand.
• Selman proposed that the development of social perspective-taking is a separate process.
• This is a domain-specific approach to explaining cognitive development.

Question 4

Selman’s Perspective Taking Dilemmas.

Answer 4

• Selman conducted research on children’s perspective-taking abilities by using a series of dilemmas which explore the child’s reasoning when faced with conflicting feelings.
• The dilemmas required the child to have to take someone else’s, or several people’s, perspectives.

Question 5

Selman’s Perspective Taking Dilemmas Example.

Answer 5

• Holly is an eight-year-old girl who likes to climb trees.
• She is the best tree climber in the neighbourhood.
• One day while climbing a tree, she falls off the bottom branch but does not hurt herself.
• Her father sees her fall, and is upset.
• He asks her to promise not to climb trees any more, and Holly promises.
• Later that day, Holly and her friends meet Sean. Sean’s kitten is caught up a tree and cannot get down.
• Something has to be done right away or the kitten may fall.
• Holly is the only one who climbs trees well enough to reach the kitten and get it down, but she remembers her promise to her father

Question 6

Selman’s Research.

Answer 6

• Procedure:
  30 boys and 30 girls took part – 20 aged 4, 20 aged 5, 20 aged 6.All were individually given a task designed to measure role-taking ability. This involved asking them how each person felt in a various scenario.
• Findings:
  A number of distinct levels of role taking were identified (see below). Selman found that the level of role-taking correlated with age, suggesting a clear developmental sequence.

Question 7

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 0

Answer 7

• Stage 0: Socially Egocentric.
• Developed at age 3-6 years.
• The child cannot reliably distinguish between their own emotions and those of others.
• They can generally identify emotional states in others but do not understand what social behaviour might have caused them.

Question 8

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 0 - Linked To Example.

Answer 8

• A child will predict that Holly will rescue the kitten, as she does not want to see it harmed.
• The child will believe Holly’s father will not be mad because whatever is right for Holly is right for others; her father will feel as she does.

Question 9

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 1

Answer 9

• Stage 1: Socially Information Role Taking.
• Developed at age 6-8 years.
• The child can tell the difference between their own point of view and that of another, but they can usually focus on only one of these perspectives.

Question 10

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 1 - Linked To Example.

Answer 10

• A child will believe that if Holly’s father does not know about the kitten then he will be mad.
• But Holly’s father would not be mad if Holly shows him the kitten.
• He would then change his mind and understand

Question 11

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 2.

Answer 11

• Stage 2: Reflective Role Taking.
• Developed at age 8-10 years.
• The child can put themselves in the position of another person and fully appreciate their perspective.
• They can, however, only take on board on point of view at a time.

Question 12

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 2 - Linked To Example.

Answer 12

• A child will believe that Holly’s father will not be mad and will not punish her because he will understand why Holly saved the kitten.
• Holly’s father can see the situation from Holly’s point of view so knows why she broke the promise to not climb trees.

Question 13

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 3.

Answer 13

• Stage 3: Mutual Role Taking.
• Developed at age 10-12 years.
• Children are now able to look at a situation from their own and another’s point of view at the same time.

Question 14

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 3 - Linked To Example.

Answer 14

• A child will believe that Holly will think that she shouldn’t be punished if she can get her father to understand why she climbed the tree.
• The child will think that Holly’s father will not be mad because he can understand both their points of view.

Question 15

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 4.

Answer 15

• Stage 4: Social And Conventional System Role Taking.
• Developed at age 12 years+.
• Young people become able to see that sometimes understanding others’ viewpoints is not enough to allow people to reach agreement.
• This is why social conventions are needed to keep order.

Question 16

Selman’s Stage Of Development: Stage 4 - Linked To Example.

Answer 16

• A person believes that Holly should not be punished, as the ethical requirement to treat animals humanely justifies Holly breaking her promise.
  -Holly’s father will not be mad, will understand and not punish her because the humane treatment of animals is important

Question 17

What Did Selman Believe That The Development Through The Stages Is Based On?

Answer 17

• Both maturity and experience.

Question 18

Later Developments To Selman’s Theory.

Answer 18

• Selman identified that the above desc of cognitive reasoning do not fully explain social development and therefore identified three aspects to social development.
• Interpersonal Understanding.
• Interpersonal Negotiation Strategies.
• Awareness of Personal Meaning of Relationships.

Question 19

Later Development To Selman’s Theory: Interpersonal Understanding.

Answer 19

• If we can take different roles then this shows we can understand social situations.
• This is what Selman measured in his earlier role-taking research.

Question 20

Later Development To Selman’s Theory: Interpersonal Negotiation Strategies.

Answer 20

• As well as understanding what others think in social situations, we also have to develop skills in how to respond to them.
• We develop social skills such as asserting our position and managing conflict.

Question 21

Later Development To Selman’s Theory: Awareness Of Personal Meaning Of Relationship.

Answer 21

• As well as understanding what others think in social situations and how to manage them, social development also requires the ability to reflect on social behaviour in the context of life history and the full range of relationships.
• For example, a child may adapt their response to another child based on previous experience with them.

Question 22

Deception.

Answer 22

• Deception entails a child being able to plant a false belief in someone else’s mind.
• They can usually do this around the age of three. Cole (1986) found that children of this age were able to hide their disappointment when they received the worst present (rather than the best one), if they were being watched by others, but they did show disappointment when filmed secretly on their own.

Question 23

Evaluation: Strength - Supporting Evidence.

Answer 23

• There is supporting evidence to show that perspective-taking improves with age.
• Cross-sectional studies such as Selman (1971) found that there were significant positive correlations between age and the ability to take different perspectives in scenarios, like that of Holly and the kitten, using children aged 4 to 6.
• Longitudinal follow up studies such as Gurucharri and Selman (1982) found that perspective taking develops with age in each child.
• This shows that there is strong evidence that social cognitive abilities do improve with age and are not just the result of individual differences in social-cognitive ability in children in different groups.

Question 24

Evaluation: Strength - Useful Application To Understanding Atypical Development.

Answer 24

• Research suggests children with ADHD and those on the autistic spectrum have problems with perspective taking.
• Marton et al. (2009) compared 50 8-12-year olds with a diagnosis of ADHD with a control group on performance on perspective-taking tasks.
• Those with ADHD did worse on understanding the scenarios, identifying the feelings of each person involved and evaluating the consequences of different actions.
• This is a strength of Selman’s work because the research has useful applications to understanding atypical development in social cognition.

Question 25

Evaluation: Strength/Weakness - Cultural Differences.

Answer 25

• Selman’s methods have allowed us to research cultural differences in perspective-taking.
• Wu and Keysar (2007) found that young adult Chinese participants did significantly better in perspective-taking than matched Americans.
• This shows that there is more to the development of perspective-taking than just cognitive maturity because the differences must be due to different cultural inputs..

Question 26

Evaluation: Strength+Limitation - Mixed Evidence For Importance Of Perspective Taking.

Answer 26

• There is mixed evidence for the importance of perspective taking.
• 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 (nice) behaviour.
• 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.

Question 27

Evaluation: Weakness - Overly Cognitive.

Answer 27

• This explanation of perspective taking could be seen as ‘overly cognitive’.
• Selman’s approach does not consider other factors such as the development of empathy, emotional self-regulation, family climate and opportunities to learn from peer interaction.
• There is more to children’s social development than their developing cognitive abilities and this is not considered.