How does narrative cue children's perspective taking?
Three experiments with a total of 120 children between 4 and 9 years of age revealed systematic errors in the recall of deictic terms from a narrative. In some cases, the terms were inconsistent with the perspective of a protagonist. The errors occurred in all age groups and were at the same level whether the protagonist was "good" or "bad" but were less common in a narrative that did not include a protagonist. The pattern of errors suggests that children adopted a perspective within the narrative. Moreover, it seems that whereas the form of the narrative is sufficient to provoke a shift in perspective, children might find it even easier to adopt a perspective when the narrative content is about a protagonist. It thus seems that the form and the content of the narrative (that it is about a person) can combine to give a strong cue to perspective.
Ziegler
Fenja
F
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. Fenja.Ziegler@nottingham.ac.uk
Mitchell
Peter
P
Currie
Gregory
G
D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010465:Perception