Taking a Third-Person Perspective Requires Inhibitory Control: Evidence From a Developmental Negative Priming Study.

To determine whether the growing ability to take a third-person perspective (3PP) is explained in part by the growing ability to inhibit a first-person perspective (1PP), 10-year-old children (n = 49) and 22-year-old adults (n = 52) performed a negative priming adaptation of the own body transformation task. Both children and adults were less efficient in adopting a 1PP after they adopted a 3PP-with a smaller amplitude of the negative priming effect with older age-and adults' and children's performances in the own body transformation task were predicted in part by their Stroop interference scores. These results suggest that the growing efficiency to adopt a 3PP is rooted in part in the growing efficiency to inhibit the 1PP.