What Piaget didn’t know: The paradox of visual perspective-taking

Research on visual perspective-taking, the ability to know what another person can see, effectively began with the work of Piaget in the 1950s. Although many authors have examined the various aspects of the phenomenon, it has never been made clear what it exactly means to take another’s viewpoint and what processes occur when a person attempts to do so. Here, we suggest that the current conceptions of perspective-taking do not reflect the empirical data. These data not only show that humans are poor at knowing what others can see, we even have great difficulty reflecting upon our own perspective. We conclude that a theory of visual perspective-taking is needed.