Selecting Pictures of Another Person's View

S ummary . Two experiments are reported which compared different forms of presentation of a perspective‐taking task. The task required 4‐year‐old children to select pictures showing another person's view of an array similar to Piaget and Inhelder's mountains. In Experiment 1 virtually all children failed a standard version of the task; however, 13 out of 20 succeeded when the task was preceded by preliminary questions which referred to critical attributes of the array and the pictures. These preliminary questions enabled children to adopt a successful two‐stage strategy on the task. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that both sets of preliminary questions were required for this effect; it also showed that when the task was presented in two stages which directly mirrored the successful strategy, virtually all children succeeded on the task. Similar results were found for 3‐year‐old children.