Epistemic perspective-taking in people of different age

The paper investigates the relationships between two types of abilities for epistemic perspective-taking - the visual and the social-cognitive. The literature postulates either a distinctiveness of these two processes (only the latter requires metarepresentation) or lack of differences between recognition of what one sees and what one knows. The discrepancies also pertain to changes in the level of these abilities in the course of human development (increase or decrease of results in the 'theory of mind᾿ tests, carried out among elderly subjects). In the current study, conducted with subjects from three age groups (mean age 16.48, 47.04 and 68.82), the 'theory of mind᾿ test and the created visual perspective-taking (VPT) test were used. The obtained results indicate: (1) satisfactory psychometric characteristics of VPT, (2) a positive relation between results of tests of both abilities, (3) a decrease of results in tests of both types of epistemic perspective-taking which accompany the age. peerReviewed publishedVersion