Visual Perspective Taking in Children: Further Ramifications of an Information-Processing Model

Abstract

Forty children between ages 6 and 8 were administered a set of spatial perspective tasks. On half of the items, children responded by rotating a duplicate of the target display; on the remainder, children reconstructed the displays to correspond to a perspective view. The displays differed as to whether they contained marked or unmarked objects. On the basis of an information-processing analysis of these tasks, we predicted that the response-type variables and stimulus variables would interact in known ways. Analysis of variance results revealed a good fit with the hypothesized outcomes. Main effects were detected for age, which favored older children, and for display, which favored unmarked objects; the rotation task proved easier. Significant interactions revealed that task demands increasing task difficulty were more problematic in the construction task than in the rotation task, as predicted.

Perspective-Taking: In Search of a Theory

“…In the famous three mountains task, children of various ages were asked to judge what another agent could see from their viewpoint. This initiated an abundance of work assessing, for example, how perspective-taking relates to broader developmental stages [ 2 ] and how familiarity with the display items modulates responses [ 3 ]. The visual perspective-taking notion has also been applied to many non-developmental areas, such as ‘joint action’ in which two participants sit adjacently and share responses (i.e., take turns) on a target discrimination task (for a review, see [ 4 ]).…”

Spatial Perspective Taking is Robust in Later Life

“…This is because the information processing abilities involved in these spatial perspective taking tasks vary and considerably influence the accuracy of task performance (Newcombe, 1989). Information processing can refer to the perception of object features (Rosser, Ensing, Mazzeo, & Horan, 1985), object-manipulation ability (Kozhevnikov & Hegarty, 2001), inhibitory functions (Hasher & Zacks, 1988), or working memory (Yamadori, Ashina, Fujii, Tsukiura, Okuda, & Osaka, 1999). Hegarty and Waller (2004) proposed a mental model of spatial perspective taking in which imagining oneself reoriented at another point in space should be separated from the other information processing abilities that eventually generate the view from this new vantage point.…”

Distinctive Features of Spatial Perspective-Taking in the Elderly

“…In recent years, Hegarty and Wallen (2004) proposed a mental model of spatial perspective-taking in which they separated imaginary body movement from other cognitive information processes. Cognitive information processing-other than that relating to imaginary body movement-could be considered to refer to the recognition of object features (Rosser, Ensing, Mazzeo, & Horan, 1985), object-manipulation spatial ability (Kozhevnikov & Hegarty, 2001), inhibitory functions (Hasher & Zacks, 1988), or simply working memory (Yamadori, Ashina, Fujii, Tsukiura, Okuda, & Osaka, 1999). Even if a person carries out imaginary body movement correctly, his/her responses to a task will contain errors if the subsequent cognitive information processing is inadequate.…”