This study, prompted by an earlier and seemingly contradictory report by Borke, presents information which sharply differentiates between role or perspective taking skills and the more primitive and developmentally prior ability to sometimes correctly anticipate the thoughts and feelings of others. In contrast to the data of Borke, which attributed perspective taking skills to children as young as 3 years of age, the present findings, based on the responses of 86 children between the ages of 6 and 12, suggest that errors in this process of social decentration persist well into middle childhood and occur despite apparent skills in accurately predicting the affective responses of others.

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One hundred twenty-five institutionalized emotionally disturbed children were evaluated in terms of their role-taking and referential communication skills. On the basis of this screening process, the 48 subjects who performed most poorly on these measures were assigned randomly to one of two experimental training programs intended to remediate deficits in either role-taking or referential communication skills. As a group these institutionalized subjects were found to be delayed significantly in the acquisition of both role taking and referential communication when compared with samples of their normal age-mates. Pre-and postintervention comparisons indicated that subjects of both experimental groups improved significantly in their role-taking ability. Subjects of the communication training program also demonstrated significant improvement in referential communication skills A 12month follow-up showed a trend for improvements in both test measures to be associated with improvements in social adjustment as rated by institutional staff.

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