Selman’s Level of Perspective Taking

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

-processing of social knowledge
-investigates how the social context affects the way we think and how our thoughts affect our social behaviour

Question 2

What did Selman come up with?

Answer 2

-perspective taking theory
-influenced by Piaget’s theory

Question 3

What is perspective taking?

Answer 3

-being able to view a situation or emotions from another persons viewpoint

Question 4

Why did Selman come up with stages?

Answer 4

-he believed children could be at different stages dependent on who they were interacting with
-all stages are based on maturity + experience

Question 5

What are the 5 stages?

Answer 5

1. egocentric
2. social-informational
3. self-reflective
4. mutual
5. social + conventional system

Question 6

When does the egocentric stage take place?

Answer 6

3-6 years

Question 7

What is the egocentric stage?

Answer 7

-child can’t distinguish between their own emotions and those of others
-identify emotional states in others but don’t understand what behaviour caused it

Question 8

When does the social-informational stage take place?

Answer 8

6-8 years

Question 9

What is the social-informational stage?

Answer 9

-can distinguish between their own POV and others

Question 10

When does the self-reflective stage take place?

Answer 10

8-10 years

Question 11

What is the self-reflective stage?

Answer 11

-put them self in the positon of another person
-appreciated the others perspective
-can only take on 1 POV at a time

Question 12

When does the mutual stage take place?

Answer 12

10-12 years

Question 13

What is the mutual stage?

Answer 13

-look at a situation from their own POV at the same times as others

Question 14

When does the social + conventional system stage take place?

Answer 14

12+ years

Question 15

What is the social + conventional system stage?

Answer 15

-become able to see that understanding others viewpoints is not enough to allow people to reach agreement

Question 16

Why is Selman’s theory useful?

Answer 16

-emphasis the social nature of development
-children take more info into account
-can analyse the perspective of others
-make links with social values

Question 17

What is the relation to deception?

Answer 17

-deception entails a child being able to plant a false belief in someone’s belief
-Cole - age of 3 children were able to hide disappointment when they got the worst present

Question 18

What research did Selman undertake?

Answer 18

-looked at changes that occurred with age in childrens responses to scenarios
-asked to take the role of different people in a social situation

Question 19

What was the procedure of Selman’s study?

Answer 19

-30 boys + 30 girls - 20x4 years olds, 20x6 year olds
-were asked a task designed to measure PT ability
-asking how each person felt in various scenarios

Question 20

What were the findings of Selman’s study?

Answer 20

-number of distinct levels of PT were identified
-found that levels of PT correlated with age
-suggesting a clear developmental stage

Question 21

What were the 3 later development to Selman’s theory?

Answer 21

1. interpersonal understanding
2. interpersonal negotiation strategies
3. awareness of personal meaning of relationships

Question 22

What is interpersonal understanding?

Answer 22

-he measured this in his earlier perspective
-if we can take different roles then we can understand social situations

Question 23

What are interpersonal negotiation strategies?

Answer 23

-develop skills in how to respond to what other think in social situations
-therefore develop social skills like asserting our position and managing conflict

Question 24

What is the awareness of personal meaning of relationships?

Answer 24

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

Question 25

What is support to Selman’s theory?

Answer 25

-strong research evidence
-found positive correlations between age + the ability to take different perspectives
-supported by longitudinal follow up studies which confirms that perspective taking develops with age
-have good validity as they control for individual differences

Question 26

What is a contradiction to Selman’s theory?

Answer 26

-issue with the research that was complete was its correlation
-do not mean that PT skills cause higher levels of social competence
-eg. popular children interact with more people = advance in PT skill
-if this was true then PT skills are simply a marker of how socially developed a child is

Question 27

What is an alternative to Selman’s theory?

Answer 27

-social cognition is the biological explanation
-eg. mirror neurones suggest we imitate others behaviours to learn intentions of others
-link between mirror + PT is supported in a physical sense
-suggests that his theory is too simplistic to explain all social cognition

Question 28

What is a practical application to Selman’s theory?

Answer 28

-helped us understand atypical development
-Martin - compared 8-12 years old children diagnosed with ADHD and a control group
-looking at performance on PT tasks, ADHD did worse
-did worse on identifying feelings of each person involved + evaluating the consequences of different actions
-means that research has identified a key cognitive defect
-supporting the usefulness of the theory in helping us to support those with atypical development

Question 29

What is an issue + debate to Selman’s theory?

Answer 29

-only 1 viewpoint is considered
-only looks at cognitive factors - whereas child development involves more than their developing cognitive abilities
-internal factors are important and made be due to a combo of the 2
-to consider 1 element of PT in isolation gives an oversimplification account of social development