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Egocentrism and Automatic Perspective Taking in Children and Adults
Author(s) -
Surtees Andrew D. R.,
Apperly Ian A.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01730.x
Subject(s) - egocentrism , psychology , perspective (graphical) , perspective taking , developmental psychology , child development , childhood development , cognitive psychology , social psychology , empathy , artificial intelligence , computer science
Children (aged 6–10) and adults (total N = 136) completed a novel visual perspective‐taking task that allowed quantitative comparisons across age groups. All age groups found it harder to judge the other person’s perspective when it differed from their own. This egocentric interference did not decrease with age, even though, overall, performance improved. In addition, it was more difficult to judge one’s own perspective when it differed from that of the other person, suggesting that the other’s perspective was processed even though it interfered with self‐perspective judgments. In a logically equivalent, nonsocial task, the same degree of interference was not observed. These findings are discussed in relation to recent findings suggesting precocious theory‐of‐mind abilities in infancy.