The purpose of this study was to examine the discussion activities about the conflict situations of picture books on the improvement of the perspective-taking ability of preschoolers of age 4. The following research questions were posed:
1. Do discuss...
The purpose of this study was to examine the discussion activities about the conflict situations of picture books on the improvement of the perspective-taking ability of preschoolers of age 4. The following research questions were posed:
1. Do discussion activities about the conflict situations of picture books have any impact on the improvement of the perspective-taking ability of preschoolers of age 4?
1-1. Do discussion activities about the conflict situations of picture books have any impact on the improvement of the cognitive perspective-taking ability of preschoolers of age 4?
1-2. Do discussion activities about the conflict situations of picture books have any impact on the improvement of the affective perspective-taking ability of preschoolers of age 4?
The subjects in this study were 26 preschoolers in two different classes of age 4 at H child educare center located in the city of Gimhae. An experimental group and a control group were organized with 13 preschoolers each. After a pretest was conducted, the experiment was implemented, and then a posttest was carried out.
The instrument used to assess their perspective-taking ability was Shin Hyun-ok(1996)'s modified version of Hudson, Forman and Brion(19820)'s Perspective-Taking Ability Inventory.
The experimental group engaged in discussion activities about the conflict situations of the selected picture books, and the control group didn't. After the experiment was concluded, they took a posttest. As for data analysis, the statistical package SPSS 14.0 was employed to make a t-test to see whether there would be any gaps between the experimental group and the control group.
The findings of the study were as follows:
First, there were no significant gaps between the experimental group and the control group in intentional perspective I, thinking perspective I and thinking perspective II, which were the subfactors of cognitive perspective-taking ability. But a significant intergroup gap was found in intentional perspective II. In terms of overall cognitive perspective-taking ability, the experimental group scored higher than the control group.
Second, there were significant gaps between the experimental group and the control group in thinking perspective I and thinking perspective II, which were the subfactors of affective perspective-taking ability. And the experimental group scored higher than the control group in overall affective perspective-taking ability as well.
The above-mentioned findings suggest that preschoolers who are of age 4 are able to foster their ability to understand and infer the feelings, emotion and response of others if they have an opportunity to solve the given problems by performing discussion activities about the conflict situations of picture books.