Two experiments investigated children's tendencies to draw what they know rather than what they see. The first experiment looked at the way children, aged five to nine, and adults represent an object occluded by another object. Most subjects drew only what they could see. The second experiment investigated subjects' interpretation of pictures…

Training in perspective-taking skills (the ability to imagine how objects look relative to one another from another person's point of view) resulted in considerable transfer of learning to other tasks and continued subject superiority over controls seven months later, indicating an inter-stage change in cognition. (MJB)

The study reported in this paper traces the nature of the changes which take place as the child gradually acquires perspective-taking skills. The results indicate that at first the young child can correctly represent only the location of the object nearest another observer; later, he can correctly represent a before-behind relationship between…