Taking And Coordinating Perspectives: From Prereflective Interactivity, Through Reflective Intersubjectivity, To Meta Reflective Sociality

摘要

Despite being eclipsed in recent years by simulation theory, theory of mind and accounts of executive functioning, social-relational approaches to perspective taking and coordination based on the ideas of Jean Piaget and George Herbert Mead have never completely disappeared from the literature of developmental psychology. According to the social-relational view presented here, perspectives are holistic orientations to situations, within which individuals coordinate their actions and interactions with objects and others. The developmental processes by which perspectives are occupied, differentiated, and coordinated move from (1) prereflective interactivity (i.e., positioning within routine, repetitive interactive sequences during infancy and early childhood), to (2) reflective intersubjectivity (i.e., the simultaneous consideration and use of multiple perspectives within the intersubjective transactions of later childhood and early adolescence - processes that are accelerated and extended through increasingly sophisticated uses of language), and finally to (3) metareflective sociality (i.e., the abstracted and generalized social engagement across a diversity of personal, interpersonal, and sociocultural perspectives witnessed in mature adult negotiations and problem solving).These social-relational processes are used to reinterpret, revise, and extend Robert Selman's theory of the development of perspective taking and coordination. The result is a developmental process of occupying, experiencing, coordinating, and engaging across a diversity of perspectives within interactive, intersubjective, and psy-chological-sociocultural transactions that spans the course of individuals' lives and captures some facets of the complex, transformative, and ongoing interplay between societies and persons.