social cognition - selman's levels of perspective taking

Question 1

basis

Answer 1

• Selman was concerned with how children develop social perspective-taking
• concerns what someone else is feeling or thinking (social cognition)
• Piaget believed in domain-general cognitive development, that physical and social perspective-taking would occur hand in hand (three mountains)
• Selman proposed that the development of social perspective-taking is a separate process, a domain-specific approach

Question 2

perspective-taking research

Answer 2

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

procedure -
- 30 boys and 30 girls, 20 4yo and 20 5yo and 20 6yo
- all individually given task designed to measure perspective-taking ability, involved asking them how each person felt in various scenarios
- one scenario featured a girl called Holly who promised her father she won’t climb trees anymore, but she then comes across her friend whose kitten is stuck in a tree
- task was to describe and explain how each person would feel if Holly did or didn’t climb the tree

findings -
- number of distinct levels of perspective-taking were found
- found that level correlated with age, suggesting a clear developmental sequence

Question 3

selman’s stages of development

Answer 3

• used perspective–taking research to formulate stage theory, ‘role-taking’

stage 0 (3-6 years) - egocentric - child cannot reliably distinguish between their own emotions and those of others, can identify emotional stated in others but do not understand what behaviour might have caused them

stage 1 (6-8 years) - social-informational - child can tell difference between their own POV and that of others, but usually only focus on one of these perspectives

stage 2 (8-10 years) - self-reflective - child can put themselves in position of another person and fully appreciate their perspective, but can only take on board on POV at a time

stage 3 (10-12 years) - mutual - are now able to look at a situation from their own and another’s POV at the same time

stage 4 (12+) - social and conventional system - become able to see that sometimes understanding other’s POVs is not enough to allow people to reach agreement, conforming with and considering social morales and norms

• Selman believed that development through these stages is based on both maturity and experience

Question 4

later developments to Selman’s theory

Answer 4

• Selman recognised that his descriptions do not fully explain social development

Schultz’s three aspects to social development -

Interpersonal understanding - what Selman measured in earlier research, if we can take different roles then we can understand social situations

Interpersonal negotiation strategies - as well as understanding what others think, we also have to develop skills in how to respond, we therefore develop social skills such as managing conflict

Awareness of personal meaning of relationships - social development also requires ability to reflect on social behaviour in context of different relationships

Question 5

improving social cognition in educational settings

Answer 5

• training children about social cognition and emotional understanding to improve social interactions and reduce anti-social behaviour such as bullying

Question 6

evaluation strength - research support for stages

Answer 6

• evidence that perspective-taking becomes more advanced with age
• Selman found significant positive correlations between age and ability to take different perspectives
• this cross-sectional research has been supported by findings of longitudinal studies, following children over a period of time and recording improvements in their perspective-taking ability
• longitudinal studies have good validity because they control for individual differences whereas cross-sectional studies don’t

Question 7

evaluation strength - research support for perspective-taking

Answer 7

• support for importance of perspective-taking in healthy social development
• observational study of child-parent interaction in toyshops and supermarkets, noted any coercive behaviour in children (ie. trying to force parents to buy things), example of unhealthy social behaviour
• found negative correlations between coercive behaviour and both age and perspective-taking ability
• relationship between perspective-taking abilities and healthy social behaviour

Question 8

evaluation limitation - too cognitive

Answer 8

• focuses on only cognitive factors
• there is fear more to social development than just increasing cognitive abilities
• by focusing on cognitive element, Selman’s approach fails to account for full range of other factors that have an impact, for example development of empathy and self-regulation
• also important external factors such as parenting style and family climate
• biology may also have an impact
• Selman’s approach is too narrow

Question 9

evaluation limitation - issues with classifying children

Answer 9

• would have taken a lot of time to decode spoken responses, younger children often struggle to verbalise their social cognition
• open to bias because what one researcher may class as one category, another researcher may class as a different category
• responses to made-up scenarios do not reflect real-life behaviour
• children may overlap between different groups
• very subjective, issues with validity

Question 10

evaluation strength - practical value

Answer 10

• valuable for parents to see if their children are developing socially in ways that they should
• if child seems to be falling behind in the stages, can indicate that there may be an issue and then parents can access support (ie. might be on the autistic spectrum if social skills are not where they should be for the child’s age)