Perceptual Learning Perspective-Taking Research Paper

The Effects of Perspective-Taking on Perceptual Learning

1. Introduction

The perspectives that we adopt when interacting in the world play an integral role in the processes of thinking and learning. This notion is implicit in the way people speak informally about learning, such as when a tutor says to a struggling student "Maybe it would help if we approached this from a different perspective." In some areas of education, such as in history or literature, understanding perspectives is an explicit focus of the curriculum. And in everyday contexts, it has been suggested that perspective-taking is the primary mechanism with which humans are able to learn from others. Tomasello, Kruger, and Ratner (1993) assert that a learner attempts "to see

There is also the strong sense that perspective-taking can be beneficial for learning in the formal disciplines. For example, perspective-taking is an integral part of what is referred to as "historical thinking" and it is a practice that is often prescribed for students by researchers and practitioners in history education (e.g., Kohlmeier, 2005). In other areas, such as science and math, perspective-taking is often implicit in classroom pedagogies: "You need to approach this problem like a mathematician" or "What would be the important questions to ask if you were a

Organizing Structures of Knowledge

Cognitive scientists have proposed a variety of representational structures, such as mental models and schemata, for how humans organize complex and relational knowledge about the world. The value of these structures is that they often exist as abstractions of phenomena, such that they can be applied generally to a range of different contexts and problems (de Vega, 1994). The process of perspective-taking may be a force behind the construction of these flexible structures. Ackerman (1996) states:

Perspective-taking provides a good example of how people drift in and out of their own viewpoint, and how this drifting leads to the building of a so-called "god's eye view" that transcends any particular vantage point, recreates hidden parts, and schematizes . . . in other words, imposes stabilities (p.