Adults and children sometimes commit ‘egocentric errors’, failing to ignore their own perspective, when interpreting others’ communication. Training imitation-inhibition reduces these errors in adults, facilitating perspective-taking. This study tested whether imitation-inhibition training may also facilitate perspective-taking in 3-6-year-olds, an age where the egocentric perspective may be particularly influential. Children participated in a 10-minute imitation-inhibition, imitation, or non-social-inhibition training (white, n=25 per condition, 33 female), and subsequently the communicative-perspective-taking Director task. Training had a significant effect (F(2, 71)= 3.268, p= .044, η2= .084): on critical trials the imitation-inhibition group selected the correct object more often than the imitation and non-social-inhibition training groups. The imitation-inhibition training thus specifically enhanced the perspective-taking process, indicating that perspective-taking from childhood onwards involves managing self-other representations.

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