Taking the perspective of others The study of Piaget (1970):Piaget (1970): In different studies, Piaget has shown that preschool children do not recognize invariance of different features, such as number or length. This is typical for children at the preoperational stage.numberlength © POSbase 2004Contributor Moreover, preschoolers often lack perspective taking: They are not able to tell what others see or to think from their perspective. Piaget was one of the first to demonstrate this fact in his famous three-mountains-study.perspective taking

The experimenter turned the table and with it the mountains. Children were told that if there is a another child at the indicated position: Which mountain would he or she see? Most children pointed to the mountain they saw themselves. Taking the perspective of others In his experiment on perspective taking, Piaget presented children of less than six years of age with three mountains on a table (we see the view of the participant): © POSbase 2004

Taking the perspective of others Piaget concluded that children could not take the perspective of others: they are egocentric in their thinking. Other studies that demonstrate people’s and especially children’s lack of perspective taking: © POSbase 2004 Estimation of one’s contribution to collaborative work (Ross & Sicoly, 1979)Ross & Sicoly, 1979 False belief and theory of mind (Wimmer & Perner, 1983)theory of mindWimmer & Perner, 1983 Unrealistic optimism (Weinstein, 1980)