Flexible social perspective taking in higher education and the role of contextual cues

Main Article Content

Anett Wolgast
Yvonne Barnes-Holmes

Abstract


Being able to coordinate the perspectives of oneself and others is likely to be helpful in educational contexts. For example, teachers need flexible social perspective taking to understand their own perspectives and those of their students. Evidence suggests that reading facilitates social perspective taking because it involves readers coordinating social perspectives. However, there is little evidence on actual flexible perspective taking in educational contexts. In the current research, we assumed that the presence of different spatial, temporal, and social cues with regard to (higher) educational contexts would affect flexible social perspective taking performances of prospective psychologists and teachers. Across two different studies, we employed relational frame theory and a within-subject design (n = 44 undergraduate students in Study 1 and n = 176 teacher education students in Study 2). We analyzed the data by Rasch-trees and general linear modeling. The results showed faster responding on flexible spatial and temporal social perspective taking tasks, involving a fictional college course in “English” rather than “statistics” (Study 1). In Study 2, the results suggested greater accuracy on flexible spatial and temporal social perspective taking tasks involving spatial rather than temporal relations (Study 2). The results shed some light on the integration of different approaches for research on understanding the relevance of flexible social perspective taking in educational contexts. Flexible spatial and temporal social perspective taking may be of benefit to both students in higher education and teachers in school education.


Article Details

How to Cite
Wolgast, A., & Barnes-Holmes, Y. (2022). Flexible social perspective taking in higher education and the role of contextual cues. Frontline Learning Research, 10(1), 76–107. https://doi.org/10.14786/flr.v10i1.781
Section
Articles
Author Biography

Anett Wolgast, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

Prof. Dr. habil. Anett Wolgast

Professor of Psychology (Media and Educational Psychology)

Department of Psychology

References

Aloe, A. M., Amo, L. C., & Shanahan, M. E. (2014). Classroom management self-efficacy and burnout: A multivariate meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 26(1), 101–126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-013-9244-0

Ballard, D. H., Hayhoe, M. M., Pook, P. K., & Rao, R. P. N. (1997). Deictic codes for the embodiment of cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20(4), 723–767. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X97001611

Bar-Haim, Y., Lamy, D., Pergamin, L., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2007). Threat-related attentional bias in anxious and nonanxious individuals: A meta-analytic study. In Psychological Bulletin (Vol. 133, Issue 1, pp. 1–24). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.1

Barnes-Holmes, Y., Foody, M., Barnes-Holmes, D., & McHugh, L. (2013). Advances in research on deictic relations and perspective-taking. In Advances in relational frame theory: Research and application. (pp. 127–148). New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

Barnes-Holmes, Y., McHugh, L., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2004). Perspective-taking and theory of mind: A relational frame account. The Behavior Analyst Today, 5(1), 15–25. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0100133

Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind” ? Cognition, 21(1), 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8

Bartosch, U., & Grygar, A.-K. (2019). Hochschulbildung mit Kompetenz. Eine Handreichung zum Qualifikationsrahmen für deutsche Hochschulabschlüsse (HQR). In Handreichung. https://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/bologna/dokumente_zur_bologna-reform/HQR_Handreichung_241019_final_ohne_HRK.pdf

Bourne, V. J. (2018). Exploring statistics anxiety: Contrasting mathematical, academic performance and trait psychological predictors. Psychology Teaching Review, 24(1), 35–43.

Brunyé, T. T., Ditman, T., Mahoney, C. R., Augustyn, J. S., & Taylor, H. A. (2009). When you and I share perspectives: Pronouns modulate perspective taking during narrative comprehension. Psychological Science, 20(1), 27–32.

Champely, S. (2017). Package “pwr” (pp. 1–22). https://github.com/heliosdrm/pwr

Cigala, A., Mori, A., & Fangareggi, F. (2015). Learning others’ point of view: perspective taking and prosocial behaviour in preschoolers. Early Child Development and Care, 185(8), 1199–1215. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2014.987272

Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2.). Erlbaum.

Damşa, C. (2014). The multi-layered nature of small-group learning: Productive interactions in object-oriented collaboration. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 9(3), 247–281. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-014-9193-8

Damşa, C., Nerland, M., & Andreadakis, Z. E. (2019). An ecological perspective on learner-constructed learning spaces. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(5), 2075–2089. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12855

Davis, M. H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 85–104.

Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126.

Dunn, T. J., Baguley, T., & Brunsden, V. (2014). From alpha to omega: A practical solution to the pervasive problem of internal consistency estimation. 399–412. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12046

Engen, H. G., & Singer, T. (2013). Empathy circuits. In Current Opinion in Neurobiology (Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 275–282). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2012.11.003

Erle, T. M., & Topolinski, S. (2015). Spatial and empathic perspective-taking correlate on a dispositional level. Social Cognition, 33(3), 187–210. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2015.33.3.187

Evertson, C. M. (1989). Improving elementary classroom management: A school-based training program for beginning the year. The Journal of Educational Research, 83(2), 82–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.1989.10885935

Gehlbach, H. (2004). A new perspective on perspective taking. European Science Editing, 38(2), 35–37. https://doi.org/10.1023/B

Gehlbach, H., Brinkworth, M. E., Hsu, L. M., King, A. M., McIntyre, J., & Rogers, T. (2016). Creating birds of similar feathers: Leveraging similarity to improve teacher-student relationships and academic achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(3), 342–352. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000042

Gehlbach, H., Brinkworth, M. E., & Wang, M. . T. (2012). The social perspective taking process: What motivates individuals to take another’s perspective? Teachers College Record. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0215(19970807)72:4<687::AID-IJC22>3.0.CO;2-7 [pii]

Gehlbach, H., Marietta, G., King, A. M., Karutz, C., Bailenson, J. N., & Dede, C. (2015). Many ways to walk a mile in another’s moccasins: Type of social perspective taking and its effect on negotiation outcomes. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 523–532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.12.035

Gehlbach, H., Young, L. V., & Roan, L. K. (2012). Teaching social perspective taking: How educators might learn from the Army. Educational Psychology, 32(3), 295–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2011.652807

Gore, N. J., Barnes-Holmes, Y., & Murphy, G. (2010). The relationship between intellectual functioning and relational perspective-taking. International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 10(1), 1–17. https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=56017066001

Gudmundsdottir, S., & Shulman, L. (1987). Pedagogical content knowledge in social studies. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 31(2), 59–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031383870310201

Hayes, S. C., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Roche, B. (2001). Relational frame theory: A post-Skinnerian account of language and cognition. Springer Science & Business Media.

Holmes, B.-. (2019). Teaching a perspective-taking component skill to children with autism in the natural environment. 2(2), 439–450. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.523

HRK, & K. M. K. (2015). Lehrerbildung für eine Schule der Vielfalt. Gemeinsame Empfehlung von Hochschulrektorenkonferenz und Kultusministerkonferenz.

HRK, BMBF, & KMK. (2011). Deutscher Qualifikationsrahmen für Hochschulabschlüsse. In Report.

Hugener, I., Pauli, C., Reusser, K., Lipowsky, F., Rakoczy, K., & Klieme, E. (2009). Teaching patterns and learning quality in Swiss and German mathematics lessons. Learning and Instruction, 19(1), 66–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.02.001

Janczyk, M. (2013). Level 2 perspective taking entails two processes: Evidence from PRP experiments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 39(6), 1878–1887. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033336

Johnson, D. W. (1975). Cooperativeness and social perspective taking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(2), 241–244.

Klopsch, B., Reschke, K., & Sliwka, A. (2022). Individual Reference Norm Orientation and Motivation: Perspectives from Germany, Finland, and Canada. In European Perspectives on Inclusive Education in Canada (pp. 203–214). Routledge.

KMK, & HRK. (2015). Educating teachers to embrace diversity. https://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/veroeffentlichungen_beschluesse/2015/2015_03_12-KMK-HRK-Empfehlung-Vielfalt-englisch.pdf

Korpershoek, H., Harms, T., de Boer, H., van Kuijk, M., & Doolaard, S. (2016). A meta-analysis of the effects of classroom management strategies and classroom management programs on students’ academic, behavioral, emotional, and motivational outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 86(3), 643–680. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315626799

Kounin, J. S. (1970). Discipline and group management in classrooms. In Discipline and group management in classrooms. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Kunter, M., Klusmann, U., Baumert, J., Richter, D., Voss, T., & Hachfeld, A. (2013). Professional competence of teachers: Effects on instructional quality and student development. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(3), 805–820. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032583

Lenhard, W., & Lenhard, A. (2016). Calculation of effect sizes. Psychometrica. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.17823.92329

Levin, M. E., Hildebrandt, M. J., Lillis, J., & Hayes, S. C. (2012). The impact of treatment components suggested by the psychological flexibility model: A meta-analysis of laboratory-based component studies. Behavior Therapy, 43(4), 741–756. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2012.05.003

Lipowsky, F., Rakoczy, K., Pauli, C., Drollinger-vetter, B., Klieme, E., & Reusser, K. (2009). Quality of geometry instruction and its short-term impact on students ’ understanding of the Pythagorean Theorem. Learning and Instruction, 19(6), 527–537. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.11.001

Loftus, G. R. (1978). On interpretation of interactions. Memory & Cognition, 6(3), 312–319. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197461

Lohbeck, A., & Freund, P. A. (2021). Students’ own and perceived teacher reference norms: how are they interrelated and linked to academic self-concept? Educational Psychology, 41(5), 640–657.

Long, A. C. J., Miller, F. G., & Upright, J. J. (2019). Classroom management for ethnic–racial minority students: A meta-analysis of single-case design studies. In School Psychology (Vol. 34, Issue 1, pp. 1–13). Educational Publishing Foundation. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000305

Marksteiner, T., Nishen, A. K., & Dickhäuser, O. (2021). Students’ perception of teachers’ reference norm orientation and cheating in the classroom. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 614199.

McHugh, L., Barnes-Holmes, Y., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2004a). A relational frame account of the development of complex cognitive phenomena: perspective-taking, false belief understanding, and deception. International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 4, 303–324.

McHugh, L., Barnes-Holmes, Y., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2004b). Perspective-taking as relational responding: A developmental profile. Psychological Record, 54(1), 115–144. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395465

McHugh, L., Barnes-Holmes, Y., Barnes-Holmes, D., Whelan, R., & Stewart, I. (2007). Knowing me, knowing you: Deictic complexity in false-belief understanding. Psychological Record, 57(4), 533–542. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395593

Möller, J., Pohlmann, B., Koller, O., & Marsh, H. W. (2009). A meta-analytic path analysis of the internal/external frame of reference model of academic achievement and academic self-concept. Review of Educational Research, 79(3), 1129–1167. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654309337522

Montoya-Rodríguez, M. M., Molina, F. J., & McHugh, L. (2017). A review of relational frame theory research into deictic relational responding. Psychological Record, 67(4), 569–579. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-016-0216-x

Mori, A., & Cigala, A. (2016). Perspective taking: training procedures in developmentally typical preschoolers. Different intervention methods and their effectiveness. Educational Psychology Review, 28(2), 267–294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-015-9306-6

Mouw, J., Saab, N. ., Gijlers, H., Hickendorff, M., van Paridon, Y., & Van Den Broek, P. (2020). The differential effect of perspective-taking ability on profiles of cooperative behaviours and learning outcomes. Frontline Learning Research, 8(6), 88–113. https://doi.org/10.14786/flr.v8i6.633

Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2004). Academic procrastination and statistics anxiety. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29(1), 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0260293042000160384

Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Seaman, M. A. (1995). The effect of time constraints and statistics test anxiety on test performance in a statistics course. The Journal of Experimental Education, 63(2), 115–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.1995.9943816

Peirce, J. W., Gray, J. R., Simpson, S., MacAskill, M. R., Höchenberger, R., Sogo, H., Kastman, E., & Lindeløv, J. (2019). PsychoPy2: experiments in behavior made easy. Behavior Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018- 01193-y

Pickering, M. J., McLean, J. F., & Gambi, C. (2012). Do addressees adopt the perspective of the speaker? Acta Psychologica, 141(2), 261–269.

R Development Core Team. (2009). R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer software manual]. https://www.r-project.org/

Rakoczy, K., Buff, A., & Lipowski, F. (2005). unterrichtsvideos.ch. http://www.unterrichtsvideos.ch/

Ranger, J., & Kuhn, J.-T. (2017). Detecting unmotivated individuals with a new model-selection approach for Rasch models. Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling, 59(3), 269–295.

Revelle, W. (2019). Using R and the psych package to find ω. 1–20. www.personality-project.org/r/tutorials/HowTo/omega.tutorial/omega.pdf

Rheinberg, F. (1977). Bezugsnorm-Orientierung von Schülern der 5. bis 13. Klasse bei der Leistungsbeurteilung. Zeitschrift Für Entwicklungspsychologie Und Padagogische Psychologie, 9(2), 90–93.

Rheinberg, F. (2001). Teachers reference-norm orientation and student motivation for learning. AERA, Conf., Seattle, 10–14.

Rjosk, C., Richter, D., Hochweber, J., Lüdtke, O., Klieme, E., & Stanat, P. (2014). Socioeconomic and language minority classroom composition and individual reading achievement: The mediating role of instructional quality. Learning and Instruction, 32, 63–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2014.01.007

Rose, D. (2018). Doing maths: Constructing procedures for maths processes. In Y. D. K. Maton, J.R. Martin (Ed.), Studying Science: New Insights into Knowledge and Language in Education (pp. 257–286). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.19268.73604

Scanlon, G., & Barnes-Holmes, Y. (2013). Changing attitudes: supporting teachers in effectively including students with emotional and behavioural difficulties in mainstream education. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 18(4), 374–395. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632752.2013.769710

Semmelmann, K., & Weigelt, S. (2017). Online psychophysics: reaction time effects in cognitive experiments. Behavior Research Methods, 49(4), 1241–1260. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0783-4

Siew, C. S. Q., McCartney, M. J., & Vitevitch, M. S. (2019). Using network science to understand statistics anxiety among college students. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 5(1), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000133

Strobl, C., Kopf, J., & Zeileis, A. (2015). Rasch trees: A new method for detecting differential item functioning in the Rasch model. Psychometrika, 80(2), 289–316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-013-9388-3

Strobl, C., Wickelmaier, F., Komboz, B., & Kopf, J. (2016). Package “psychotree.” https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/psychotree/index.html

Tschannen-Moran, M., & Hoy, A. W. (2001). Teacher efficacy: capturing an elusive construct. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(7), 783–805. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0742-051X(01)00036-1

von Aufschnaiter, C., Cappell, J., Dübbelde, G., Ennemoser, M., Mayer, J., Stiensmeier-Pelster, J., Sträßer, R., & Wolgast, A. (2015). Diagnostic competence - theoretical considerations concerning a central construct of teacher education. Zeitschrift Fur Padagogik, 61(5).

Wickelgren, W. A. (1977). Speed-accuracy tradeoff. SpringerReference, 41, 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1007/springerreference_183986

Willisch, A., Wolgast, A., & Donat, M. (2021). Skalendokumentation „Cyber-Bullying unter Studierenden.

Wilson, C. J., Soranzo, A., & Bertamini, M. (2017). Attentional interference is modulated by salience not sentience. Acta Psychologica, 178, 56–65.

Wolgast, A. (2017). Sämtliche Schülerinnen und Schüler sehen und berücksichtigen: Perspektivübernahme von Lehrpersonen. Http://De.in-Mind.Org, 1, 1–14. http://de.in-mind.org/article/saemtliche-schuelerinnen-und-schueler-sehen-und-beruecksichtigen-perspektivuebernahme-von

Wolgast, A., & Barnes-Holmes, Y. (2018). Social perspective taking and metacognition of children: A longitudinal view across the fifth grade of school. Humanistic Psychologist, 46(1). https://doi.org/10.1037/hum0000077

Wolgast, A., Barnes-Holmes, Y., Hartmann, U., & Decristan, J. (2018). Interrelations between perspective taking and reading experience: A longitudinal view on students in the fifth year of school. Psychology of Language and Communication, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.2478/plc-2018-0019

Wolgast, A., Hille, M., Streit, P., & Grützemann, W. (2020). Does test-anxiety experience impair student teachers’ later tendency to perspective-taking? Acta Educationis Generalis, 10(1), 1–24.

Wolgast, A., & Oyserman, D. (2019). Seeing what other people see: accessible cultural mindset affects perspective-taking. Culture and Brain. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-019-00083-0

Wolgast, A., Tandler, N., Harrison, L., & Umlauft, S. (2020). Adults’ dispositional and situational perspective-taking: a systematic review. Educational Psychology Review, 32(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09507-y

Zeidner, M. (1991). Statistics and mathematics anxiety in social science students: Some interesting parallels. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 61(3), 319–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1991.tb00989.x

Zimmerman, M. E. (2011). Speed-accuracy tradeoff. In J. S. Kreutzer, J. DeLuca, & B. Caplan (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology (p. 2344). Springer New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79948-3_1247