‘Putting oneself in someone else's shoes during childhood: How to learn it’ Training for preschool age children

Abstract

Perspective taking, defined as the aptitude to understand the cognitive, affective, and visual point of view of others, represents a fundamental social ability for the development of socio-cognitive and affective skills. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the possibility of promoting perspective taking in typically developmental preschoolers using an evidence-based training procedure. The research used a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design in which 206 typically developmental preschoolers (104 males and 102 females) were categorized into the experimental or the control group. In order to try to improve perspective taking, we proposed an evidence-based ecological intervention inside the kindergarten in which children, in small groups, were involved in activities such as storytelling, discussion, drawing, and dramatization. We measured the perspective taking ability through several tests and prosocial behaviour through repeated ecological non-participant observations both before and after the training. The training, which lasted 15days, was subdivided into nine different sessions, each lasting 45min, and involved small groups of 6-7 children. Before and after the training, each child completed nine perspective taking tasks (three tasks for each perspective taking dimension) and was observed three times, each one for 45min, on different days. Results showed a significant increase in perspective taking scores after training in the experimental condition relative to the control condition, supporting the possibility of promoting perspective taking ability in preschoolers. An increase in prosocial behaviour after training was also observed in the experimental group as compared with the control group. In conclusion, these results suggest it is possible to improve perspective taking in preschoolers, also promoting prosocial abilities.