Learning others' point of view: perspective taking and prosocial behaviour in preschoolers

Perspective taking, defined as the ability to assume another's perspective, can be considered a multidimensional construct which is composed of three different components: cognitive, visual and affective. This study wanted to verify the possibility of promoting perspective taking in preschoolers using ecological training. The maintenance of children's acquired abilities after six months was also assessed. Subsequently, analyses were conducted to examine if a possible increase in these competences could positively influence prosocial disposition and determine a decrease of aggressiveness. The design was a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental procedure with independent samples: an experimental and a control group, each one with 30 children aged 3–5. Results showed a significant improvement in most of the investigated areas after the training, confirming the possibility of promoting perspective taking abilities. Moreover, children with greater perspective taking skills were also more inclined to behave in a prosocial way during peer interactions. Furthermore, these changes were persistent at the follow-up session six months later.