Structure and Content in Social Cognition: Conceptual and Empirical Analyses

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Abstract
Two perspective-taking tasks were analyzed conceptually. A number of subtasks emerged from the analysis that call for equivalent operations of social reasoning within tasks of different content. These subtasks apparently form a logical hierarchy of abilities required for decentering. They correspond to paradigmatic types of tasks used in person perception and structuralist traditions of research in social cognition. Mastery of each lower-levels task in assumed to develop prior to mastery of each higher-level task. Paradigmatic types of social-cognitive tasks can be logically ordered in a hierarchy derived from the present analysis. The developmental significance of the hierarchy was tested in 2 independent samples. The empirical evidence confirmed the developmental interpretation of the logical sequence. Differences in performance levels of structurally equivalent subtasks between the 2 content domains are interpreted in terms of the interaction of structure and content. The conceptual-analysis approach offers an alternative or supplement to correlational approaches to the analysis of childrens'' social-cognitive abilities.