Abstract
Research into the co-ordination of perspectives had its beginnings with the 'three mountains experiment' -of Piaget and Inhelder (1956). The present study examined the original findings and showed two developmental factors to be implicit in the conclusions made. These were egocehtrism/socicentrism, i. e. the ability of a child to free himself from his own perception of the display, and centration/decentration, i. e. the ability of the child to, free himself from the tendency to cenirate on one object within the display. The major replication (Laurendeau and Pinard, 1970) was shown to give strong support for Piaget and lnhelder (1956). The research literature was organised into four headings grouped according to. the dominant methodology. These were:- (a) characteristics of the display (b) the introductory sequence used (c) the response procedure and (d) correlational methods. In this way it proved possible to reconcile the variety of apparently conflicting and contradictory findings of the literature. The experimental Investigations were made in the two primary areas found in Piaget and Ihelder(1956). Experiments 1 to 4 assessed the development of sociocentriam. Children of ages 4 to 6 years were shown to be able to predict accurately the view of an observer when a verbal response was required. Addition of a picture selection task, however, led to egocentric responding. In Experiments 5 had 6 co-ordination of perspectives was investigated. Three major procedural variables - verbal description, model building and picture selection - were compared for 5. 5, 8 and 10 year olds using the same display. The effect of the presence of the egocentric photograph was assessed by making it available for selection for only half of the picture selection trials. A model for the co-ordination of perspectives was developed which linked children's performance to a perceptual/ representational,distinction. The model incorporated the concept of 'failure to inhibit one's own view' (Wigl and Fishbein, 1974) within the representational solution path.