Selman C&D

Question 1

Social cognition

Answer 1

describes the mental processes we make use of when engaged in social interaction

Question 2

Perspective-taking

Answer 2

our ability to appreciate a social situation from the perspective of other people

Question 3

Social perspective-taking

Answer 3

concerns what someone else is feeling or thinking i.e. social cognition.

Question 4

What did Piaget believe in?

Answer 4

domain-general cognitive development, so he believed that physical and social perspective-taking would occur simultaneously

Question 5

What did Selman say in regards to Piaget?

Answer 5

social perspective-taking is a separate process, a domain-specific approach to explaining cognitive development.

Question 6

Selman’s perspective-taking research

Answer 6

looked at changes that happened with age in children’s responses to scenarios where they were asked to take the role of different people in a social situation.

Question 7

Selman’s procedure

holly

Answer 7

• 30 boys, 30 girls
• 20 4 year olds, 20 5 year olds, 20 6 year olds
• Individually received task designed to ensure perspective-taking ability
• Involved asking how each person felt in various scenarios
• Eg a scenario with a child named Holly, who promised her father that she would never climb trees but then she sees her friend whose kitten is stuck up a tree
• The task was to describe and explain how each person would feel if Holly did or didn’t climb the tree

Question 8

Selman’s findings

Answer 8

• Number of distinct levels of perspective-taking were identified
• The level of perspective-taking correlated with age
• Clear developmental sequence

Question 9

stage 0

Answer 9

age 3-6, egocentric

Question 10

stage 1

Answer 10

age 6-8, social-informational

Question 11

stage 2

Answer 11

8-10, self-reflective

Question 12

stage 3

Answer 12

10-12, mutual

Question 13

stage 4

Answer 13

12+, social and conventional system

Question 14

egocentric

Answer 14

Can’t reliably distinguish between their own emotions and others emotions, generally identify emotional states in others, do not understand what social behaviour may have caused them

Question 15

social-informational

Answer 15

Can tell the difference between their own POV and that of others, can usually focus on only one of these perspectives

Question 16

self-reflective

Answer 16

Child can put themselves in position of another person fully, appreciates others perspective, can only take on board one POV at a time

Question 17

Mutual

Answer 17

Able to look at a situation from their own POV and others at the same time

Question 18

Social and conventional system

Answer 18

Able to see that sometimes understanding others views is not enough to allow people to reach agreement, hence why social conventions are needed to keep order

Question 19

Selman recognised that this does not fully explain social development and there are also 3 aspects to social development (Schultz et al):

Answer 19

1. Interpersonal understanding
2. Interpersonal negotiation strategies
3. Awareness of personal meaning of relationships

Question 20

Interpersonal understanding

Answer 20

what was measured in the earlier perspective-taking task, if we can take different roles then we can understand social situations

Question 21

Interpersonal negotiation strategies

Answer 21

as well as understanding what others think we need to develop skills in how to respond to them, develop social skills such as asserting out position and managing conflict

Question 22

Awareness of personal meaning of relationships

Answer 22

requires ability to reflect on social behaviour in the context of different relationships, eg a violent gang member may have an advanced social understanding and good social skills but chooses a simple approach of conflict because of their role in the gang
…..

Question 23

Research support for stages -
Evidence that perspective-taking becomes more advanced with age

strength

Answer 23

• Selman tested 60 children (both genders aged 4-6) using scenarios like Holly and the kitten
• Found significant positive correlations between age and the ability to take different perspectives
• Cross-sectional research been supported by longitudinal studies eg Gurucharri and Selman
• Longitudinal studies have good validity as they control for individual differences where cross-sectional studies dont
  Solid support from different lines of research

Question 24

Too cognitive -
Focuses only on cognitive factors

limitation

Answer 24

• More to social development than increasing their cognitive abilities
• Selmans approach fails to take into account a range of other factors that impacts children’s social development
• Internal factors include the development of empathy and emotional self-regulation
• External factors include parenting style, family climate
  Too narrow of an approach

Question 25

Research support for perspective-taking -
Important for healthy social development

strength

Answer 25

• Buijzen and Valkenburg observation of child-parent interaction in toy shops and food shops
• Interactions where parents refused to buy child something they wanted
• Noted any coercive behaviour in the children
• Example of unhealthy social behaviour
• Found negative correlations between coercive behaviour and both age and perspective-taking ability
  There is a relationship between perspective-taking abilities and healthy social behaviour

Question 26

counterpoint to Research support for perspective-taking

limitation

Answer 26

• Other research has not been supportive
• Gasser and Keller assessed perspective taking in bullies, victims and non-participants
• Found that bullies displayed no difficulties in perspective-taking
  It may not be a key element in healthy social development

Question 27

RWA

strength

Answer 27

• In schools, teaching young children to appreciate someone’s point of view
• Social skills training for adults with learning disabilities to help people learn to how communicate
• With offenders, working with prisoners to develop their empathetic and pro-social behaviour when they are released
  Real world value