Social Skills: Perspective Taking

Information on Perspective-Taking:  What is it?  How does it work?

Perspective-taking is generally considered the ability to understand that not only do I have thoughts and opinions but that other people have their own thoughts and opinions about things.  Their views may be very different from mine.  Perspective taking is the ability to understand these concepts as well as the ability to put myself in the other person's shoes and view things with their perspective in mind.  All of us develop varying degrees of perspective-taking skills over the course of our lifetimes.  Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders have particular problems with this type of thinking, as do some individuals with various disorders such as ADHD, Social Pragmatic Disorder, and Learning Disabilities.  In working with social skills, it will be important to specifically address this area of pragmatic development.  The following links provide much more information on this skill area.

Michelle Winner on perspective-taking as it relates to social skills development:
4 steps of perspective taking: 
My Boardmaker handout of these steps PDF
36 page manual on her social communication profile: 

Other online resources:
Interesting article on perspective-taking among the general human population
Article on the developmental process of perspective-taking
Perspective skills by grade levels
Jill Kuzma  Nice website with lots of resources for Social Thinking activities

Activities and Exercises:

Perception as perspective exercise
Activities
Suggestions for parents of preschoolers
Archived book:  Lessons for Understanding: An Elementary School Curriculum on Perspective Taking by Terri Vandercook, et.al.
Exercise in seeing the world through different eyes


Videos:
Superheroes Social Skills - Perspective Taking (Short Takes 3) 
Perspective taking with R chi
ThinkBlocks:  I do not have or use them but it is an interesting concept.
The "False Beliefs" Test: Theory of Mind
Catalyst - Theory of Mind
Autism and the Brain's Theory of Mind - 58 minute video of Uta Frith lecture
Duck Rabbit

Other Activities:

Visual Perspective:  Activities in visual perspective may not seem to be true perspective-taking lessons at first glance (pun intended).    However, part of the problem of perspective taking involves rigidity in thought process, so these activities are good for teaching flexibility in thinking or processing, and are pretty cool at the same time.  Being able to see one picture one way and then to change our "perspective"and see the same picture in a different way helps us to process that there is more than one way to look at things.

Slide show on perspective with activities (in second part)