Analysis Of Selman's Stages Of Perspective Taking

The positive friendships Michael has are because of his social skills, classifying him as a child who is “socially competent” (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2016, p. 565). He knows how to cherish his peers in academic settings and in social settings without any signs of aggression, but with great empathy. I previously labeled that as interpersonal intelligence in my cognition and language study; however, we will now explore Michael’s social cognition, the way he speculates and reasons about how others feel and think (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2016, p. 473). According to Robert Selman, an American psychologist, his theory of social perspective catalogs the “developmental trends in children’s thinking during social exchanges” (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2016, p. 476).
This particular level called Reciprocal (Self-Reflective) has an age range of 7-12 years, and explains that children have the ability to place themselves in another person’s position to understand their thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Children like Michael have “increasing use of ‘feeling’ and ‘thinking’ words (e.g. want, sad, know)” (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2016, p. 478). From a neuroscience-based perspective, mirror neurons play a role in how one can empathize with another. Therefore, when Michael feels sad that one classmate teases another, it shows that mirror neurons “allow an individual to draw reasonable inferences about what another person is doing, thinking, and feeling” (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2016, p.