Perspective-taking by mentally retarded children: a one-year follow-up

The value of repeated measurement in the area of social understanding was demonstrated. In a one-year follow-up, a role-taking task was readministered to 27 of 31 mentally retarded children in order to determine the effects of time on perspective-taking task performance and examine the relationship between perspective-taking task performance and verbal justification for the performance. Performance from one year to the next was, in general, consistent with developmental expectations. Significant associations were found between performance (response scores) and justification (explanation scores), but the nature of the relationship did not indicate a one-to-one correspondence between the two. Implications of these findings for assessment of retarded persons were discussed.