G: How does narrative cue children's perspective taking? Dev Psychol 2005

Three experiments with a total of 120 children between 4 and 9 years of age revealed systematic errors in the recall of deictic terms from a narrative. In some cases, the terms were inconsistent with the perspective of a protagonist. The errors occurred in all age groups and were at the same level whether the protagonist was “good ” or “bad ” but were less common in a narrative that did not include a protagonist. The pattern of errors suggests that children adopted a perspective within the narrative. Moreover, it seems that whereas the form of the narrative is sufficient to provoke a shift in perspective, children might find it even easier to adopt a perspective when the narrative content is about a protagonist. It thus seems that the form and the content of the narrative (that it is about a person) can combine to give a strong cue to perspective. It is generally thought that when listening to narrative, people adopt the perspective of the principal protagonist and continue to adhere to this specific point of view (Black, Turner, & Bower, 1979). This is an interesting phenomenon because it demonstrates people’s capacity to step outside their own perspective and readily adopt that of another person. Being able to mentally shift to th