Perspective-Taking and Children's Responses to Teachers

For 3- to 4-year-olds

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Participate Now!” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you. In this study, your child will answer some questions about pictures and videos. For this study, we ask you to send us a picture of yourself that looks something like this here, with you sitting, smiling and looking at any picture/drawing flat on the table in front of you. This is a two-part study: You can sign up for up to two sessions, on two separate dates.

Young children often struggle to understand how others' perspectives are different from their own. But perspective-taking is very important to teaching, and it has not been studied much in teaching contexts. The present study asks how children think about perspectives in teaching contexts. Specifically, we ask whether children understand that teachers take on the perspectives of the people they are teaching and how children evaluate others’ based on their perspective-taking abilities. This research will shed light on children’s understanding of the role of perspective-taking in teaching.

20 minutes

Children will receive a $5 online gift card and (if requested) a certificate of participation, within 24 hours of participating over Zoom. To receive the gift card and certificate, the child must be within the age range for our study. Each child will only receive one gift card. We can compensate participants with an Amazon US gift card, or with an alternative online gift card. We'll ask you about what gift cards work for your family, and we'll work with our lab manager to get you a suitable gift card.