Building blocks through the eyes of others: A training study in visuospatial perspective-taking for improving children's emotion understanding
Abstract
This study developed a block-building training paradigm to examine whether visuospatial experience in simulating another person's frame of reference can enhance young children's understanding of emotions. Conducted between 2020 and 2022, the study involved 106 children aged 4.5 years from Hong Kong (Mage = 55.30 months; 52% girls; all Hong Kong Chinese). Children in the intervention group outperformed those in the control group in both visuospatial perspective-taking and emotion understanding at posttest. Notably, mediation analyses revealed that the block-building training indirectly improved children's emotion understanding by enhancing their visuospatial perspective-taking. These findings support the idea that psychological perspective-taking may be grounded in embodied simulation processes involved in visuospatial perspective-taking.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Child and Animal Learning Development
Spatial Cognition and Navigation
Action Observation and Synchronization
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Child Development
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Volume
- 97
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 83–96
- Publication date
- 1 January 2026
- Language
- EN