This example of children's ability to take the perspective of others shows some of the ways in which our research is carried out and our ideas about child development
The three mountains task
Jean Piaget’s work is one of the most significant contributions to developmental psychology. One of his many interests was in children’s ability to understand the perspective of other people. At the most simple, this concerned whether a child could understand that what another person sees is not necessarily the same as what the child can see.
Jean Piaget believed that young children are ‘egocentric’ in the sense that they have difficulty understanding perspectives that are different from their own. One of the pieces of evidence that supported his claim came from the ‘Three Mountains task’. Look at this task and see what happens with a child who is 4 years old. Is the young boy able to understand that sometimes a doll will see a different view to the one he can see?
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Lewis, like most young children, was not successful in this task. So what happens with older children?
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Content last updated: 24/01/2007
