Can Private Speech andSociodramatic Play Promote
Perspective Taking andReduce Egocentrism?
A Post-Vygotskian Reply to Piaget•
Jeremy E. Sawyer

Jeremy Sawyer recounts that, after Lev S. Vygotsky’s death, Jean Piaget conceded the Russian psychologist correctly understood the social origins, functions, and developmental trajectory of children’s egocentric speech (nowcalled private speech) but dismissed this work as irrelevant to children’s egocentrism or nondifferentiation of perspectives. Sawyer asserts that, although
Piaget precluded perspective taking in egocentric speech, a post-Vygotskian
framework suggests private speech and sociodramatic play may actuallypromote perspective taking, thereby reducing egocentrism. In light of theseassertions, Sawyer examines private speech transcripts from preschoolers forevidence of perspective taking and concludes that they suggest children internalize perspectival differences through private speech and use more implicit
perspective taking than explicit mental-state terms. And preschoolers, theauthor suggests, employ more sociodramatic speech in a sociodramatic playcontext to enact imaginary scenarios and pretend roles. He concludes that,rather than a remnant of egocentrism, private speech may be a psychologicaltool for engaging multiple perspectives. Key words: egocentrism; perspective
taking; Piaget; private speech; sociodramatic play; Vygotsky

For psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky, sociodramatic play and private

speech proved pivotal aspects of preschool children’s development. He derived
his theory about their role partly by confronting the ideas of famed childhood
theorist and psychologist Jean Piaget. For Piaget, egocentrism was a central
phenomenon that children overcame as they learned about social and cognitive perspectives other than their own. Piaget held that children’s self-talk was“egocentric speech” that eventually disappeared as children’s thinking and speech
became more socialized. Vygotsky proposed that instead egocentric speech (orprivate speech as we call it today) constitutes a phase in the process of internalizing speech, during which children’s initial social speech generates, first,
254

American Journal of Play, Volume 15, number 3 © 2023 by The Strong
Contact Jeremy E. Sawyer at Jeremy.Sawyer@kbcc.cuny.edu

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

private speech and eventually inner speech, or verbal thinking. As we shall see,
Piaget appreciated Vygotsky’s critique but also believed it irrelevant to the crucial phenomenon of egocentrism. While true that Vygotsky never investigatedegocentrism, I contend his work on private speech and play offers a strong
foundation for understanding children’s development of perspective taking, theobverse of egocentrism.
As described in Vygotsky’s “Play and Its Role in the Mental Developmentof the Child” (2016), sociodramatic play embodies pretend role play, in whichchildren create imaginary scenarios and take on pretend roles. Children typicallygenerate or follow their own rules during such play, for instance by staying incharacter while playing the role of a doctor in an imaginary hospital. Vygotsky’s
approach influenced later post-Vygotskians like psychologist and play theorist Daniil Elkonin (2005), who identified social role play as the basic unit ofchildren’s advanced, mature form of play from which imaginary scenarios andassociated play actions follow. Vygotsky also considered sociodramatic play aleading activity that propelled preschoolers’ development in numerous ways.
Private speech, on the other hand, is speech that children spontaneously speak
aloud, seemingly to nobody, during various activities. Preschool-age children are
the most prolific users of private speech, and they are especially likely to employ
it during challenging activities (Winsler 2009). Vygotsky studied private speech
primarily as a cognitive tool that children use to think and solve problems, topurposefully direct their attention, and to regulate their own actions (Vygotsky[1934] 1987).
Although sociodramatic play was often investigated separately by Vygotsky
and later researchers, there is good reason to connect it to private speech. Bothsociodramatic play and private speech contribute to children’s motivation indifferent activities (Sawyer 2017; Sawyer and Brooks 2021), a finding implied by
Vygotsky’s writings on children’s development of volition (Vygotsky [1934] 1987,
2016). Similarly, Vygotsky’s work suggests that sociodramatic play and private
speech may contribute to a child’s facility for shifting social perspectives andadopting various points of view about reality. I unite Vygotskian theory on playand private speech to guide an empirical investigation of children’s emergent
perspective taking.
Egocentrism underlies children’s difficulty in recognizing, understanding,and coordinating perspectives other than their own. To illuminate how children overcome egocentrism developmentally, I reconsider a dialogue between
Vygotsky and Piaget on egocentric speech—now better known as private speech

255

256

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYin deference to Vygotsky’s critique of Piaget. In their famous exchange, Piaget
had the last word (nearly three decades after Vygotsky’s death). To advancethe discussion, I make a post-Vygotskian reply to Piaget that integrates sociodramatic play and private speech.
Although Piaget precluded perspective taking in egocentric speech, I suggest that, conversely, children’s private speech—especially within sociodramaticplay—may foster perspective taking and thereby mitigate egocentrism. Although
Vygotsky never directly addressed perspective taking or the capacities known
nowadays as theory of mind, I use his work as a basis for exploring how children
overcome egocentrism by developing this capacity. To explore this possibility
empirically, I examined preschool children’s private speech in sociodramatic play
and task-oriented contexts for evidence of nascent perspective taking. I present
my findings and their implications for how children learn imaginatively to adopt
multiple perspectives through play and private speech.

Vygotsky Critiques Piaget on Egocentric Speech
In his early books The Language and Thought of the Child (1923) and Judgment
and Reasoning in the Child (1924), Piaget proposed that children’s egocentricmonologues, spoken aloud seemingly to nobody, reflected the asocial origins ofchildren’s thinking. Influenced by Freud’s notions of primary process (acting forthe immediate gratification of needs) and secondary process (regulating one’s
needs to attend to reality), Piaget conceptualized two modes of thought: first
autistic and then logical, scientific thought—with egocentrism as a transitional
phase between them. As Kesselring and Müller (2011) detail, Piaget positioned
the egocentric stage between about three to seven years of age, from the earlier autistic period to the later period of logical thought. Piaget held that egocentric speech reflected remnants of earlier autistic thinking and that these asocial characteristics faded as children’s thinking became increasingly socialized.
Thus, socialized speech gradually replaced egocentric speech.
Vygotsky ([1934] 1987) paid an enormous debt of gratitude to Piaget forhis pioneering work on egocentric speech, but he also severely criticized Piaget’s
theory. Vygotsky took issue with the notion that children’s speech had autistic
origins that then underwent socialization. Vygotsky countered that children’s
speech is entirely social from the start but that it undergoes a phase of selfdirected (private) speech for cognitive purposes before becoming internalized as

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

inner speech, or verbal thinking (Vygotsky and Luria 1929). Above all, Vygotsky
critiqued Piaget’s interpretation of egocentric speech as a useless accompanimentto children’s activity that merely followed a pleasure principle disconnected fromreality. Vygotsky argued (and demonstrated through several empirical studies)that children’s self-talk was in fact useful for thinking, problem solving, andself-regulation. Vygotsky wrote that children’s thinking and self-directed speech,
instead, followed the reality principle, which undermined Piaget’s claims thatsuch speech revealed children’s underlying egocentrism.

Piaget Strikes Back
Decades after Vygotsky’s death in 1934, Piaget ([1962] 2000) responded, lamenting that he had never previously read Vygotsky and could not converse withhim during his lifetime: “It is not without sadness that an author discovers,
twenty-five years after its publication, the work of a fellow author who has diedin the meantime. . . . I regret this profoundly, for we could have come to anunderstanding on a number of issues” (325). As described in van der Veer (1996),
however, Piaget was indeed aware of Vygotsky’s criticisms by 1932, and by thenhe possibly had access to Vygotsky’s writings in English as well as in Russian. It
appears Piaget chose not to engage with Vygotsky at the time, possibly because
his interests had shifted—or perhaps because it was not his style to engage withcritics, preferring to forge ahead with his own experiments and theories.
When Piaget did respond some thirty years later, he admitted that Vygotsky
was entirely correct about the social origins and functional usefulness of children’s egocentric speech. Piaget further conceded that Vygotsky was correct
about the developmental trajectory in which children’s social speech became
progressively internalized, passing through a phase of self-directed speech on
its way to become silent, inner speech. Recent empirical studies have supported
Vygotsky’s notion that private speech arises from social speech, becomes internalized as inner speech, and proves vital to the development of psychologicalprocesses like verbal thought, metacognition, and self-regulation (see Winsler
2009 for a review).
At the same time, however, Piaget claimed that Vygotsky had ignored themore general phenomenon of children’s egocentrism. For instance, Piaget argued
that Vygotsky disregarded children’s egocentric “collective monologues.” Anexample might be when two young children appear to be talking with each other,

257

258

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYbut each child speaks a monologue unrelated to what the other child is thinking,doing, or saying. Piaget seemed to hold that Vygotsky’s silence on this topic suggested he had overlooked the importance of egocentrism to children’s thinking.

Piaget’s Revised Concept of Egocentrism
It is important to note that by the time he responded to Vygotsky in 1962,
Piaget had distanced himself from Freudian ideas and had fundamentallyrevised the theory of egocentrism laid out in his early books. As Kesselring andMüller (2011) describe, Piaget jettisoned autism as the starting point for children’sdevelopment, instead acknowledging infants’ behavior as primarily adaptive tothe environment. This allowed him to agree with Vygotsky on the functional
origins of children’s thinking and self-directed speech. However, the notionof autism lingered in Piaget’s later work, including the idea that symbolic
representation originated in personal imagery. As we will see, this significantly
differs from Vygotsky’s view that symbolic capacities arise through play whenchildren make objects stand for other objects, for instance when they use astick to represent a horse (Vygotsky 2016). Moreover, Piaget saw children’s play
as dominated by assimilation, which could distort reality to follow the autistic
pleasure principle.
By 1962 Piaget no longer considered egocentrism a stage between autism
and logical thought but believed it recurred at various stages of development(Kesselring and Müller 2011). Shorn of its Freudian baggage, egocentrism wasdefined more strictly as difficulty in differentiating and coordinating cognitiveand social perspectives. An early formulation of Piaget’s still captures this: “Thechild sees everything from his own point of view. . . . He believes all the world
to think like himself. He has not yet discovered the multiplicity of possible
perspectives and remains blind to all but his own as if that were the only one
possible” (Piaget [1926] 1929, 167). Piaget held that this egocentrism results indifficulty understanding relational concepts like “sister,” which require at least
two different points of view (e.g., I am a sister to Annika as Annika is a sisterto me). It also resulted in speech—like a collective monologue—that betrayed
impoverished perspective-taking capacities.
Piaget thus argued that, although Vygotsky was correct to point out thategocentric speech was not an outgrowth of autistic tendencies (Piaget’s previous notion of egocentrism), egocentrism in its revised form remained a critical

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

developmental phenomenon. Piaget argued that his work since Vygotsky’s death
offered even firmer support for cognitive egocentrism—or “nondifferentiationof points of view”—in young children. In sum, while agreeing with Vygotsky’sview on the function and trajectory of egocentric speech, Piaget denied the relevance of Vygotsky’s theory to his revised theory of egocentrism as an inability
to shift mental perspectives. From a modern vantage point, this charge appears
to merit a neo-Vygotskian response.

What Can Vygotsky Tell Us about Egocentrism
and Social Understanding?
Piaget was correct that egocentrism and perspective taking were not central
preoccupations for Vygotsky. Nevertheless, recent neo-Vygotskian and even
neo-Piagetian work suggests that private speech and the internalization of language may play a role in children’s development of social understanding. Social
understanding (Carpendale and Lewis 2004, 2006) is an umbrella term thatencompasses multiple forms of perspective taking and understanding of otherminds. It includes infant and toddler “mind reading,” as well as later, moresophisticated theory-like understandings of mental states sometimes referred
to as mentalizing or theory of mind.
In a review of the relevance of Vygotskian theory to social understanding,
Fernyhough (2008) points out that, although Piaget recognized the importanceof social exchanges for cognitive development, Vygotsky went much further.
Vygotsky claimed that all higher psychological processes—including logicalmemory, voluntary attention, and verbal, conceptual thinking—were mediated by psychological tools developed by human culture, with language themost important tool. Empirical support for Vygotsky’s prediction of an inverted
U-shaped (or negative quadratic) trajectory of children’s private speech during
the preschool years (Winsler and Naglieri 2003) and semantic and syntactic
abbreviations of private speech (Winsler et al. 2003) bolster his account of speechinternalization. By comparison, Piaget’s account of language was far less developed (Müller and Carpendale 2000), and he seemed to reject Vygotsky’s notionof semiotic mediation of higher mental functions.
Fernyhough (2008) outlines the dialogical thinking (DT) framework, highlighting the possibility implicit in Vygotsky that internalizing social dialogues,
with their inherent multiplicity of perspectives, may contribute to children’s

259

260

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYgrowth in social understanding. DT proposes that in interpersonal exchanges
people express alternate perspectives on reality. Thus, internalizing these dialogues can restructure our cognition to accommodate multiple perspectives.
Indeed, verbal thinking often appears to take the form of a dialogue between
different perspectives, as in the trope of a devil and an angel arguing on one’s
shoulders.
DT employs Bakhtin’s (1986) concepts of “voice” and “dialogue” to showthat each speaker occupies a unique perspective on reality, expressed throughspeech. Speech embodies the perspectives of others who have used similar words
before, and our speech always anticipates a possible response from a real or
imagined partner. For Bakhtin, even a single utterance can express multiple
perspectives on reality. The logical conclusion is that internalizing dialogic interactions inevitably involves some adoption of the perspectives enacted in the
dialogues. Through this process, children gain a basis for operating flexibly withmultiple perspectives on the people with whom they interact and eventually forunderstanding how different beliefs, knowledge, and orientations to the world
influence human behavior.

Private Speech and Perspective Taking
Additional work since Fernyhough’s (2008) review supports a hypothesized
relation between private speech and social understanding. First, a neo-Piagetianaccount argues that private speech aids the enactment of various forms of social
cognition (Carpendale et al. 2009). Fernyhough and Meins (2009) discuss longitudinal evidence for developing interfunctional relations between private speechand children’s theory of mind. Importantly, an empirical study (Ioa et al. 2015)
found a concurrent link between children’s use of partially internalized private
speech (muttered, fragmented self-talk) and their performance during a theoryof mind task. Finally, Manfra and Winsler (2006) found that three- to five-yearold children are largely aware of their own private speech, and the children
usually say their private speech is self-directed. This means that children view
their private speech as spoken to themselves—not to real or imagined others,
as Piaget claimed. Moreover, this study found a link between children’s awareness of their own private speech and their theory of mind development, further
highlighting the connection.
Synthesizing this work suggests that, far from reflecting egocentrism, chil-Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

dren’s use of private speech likely contributes to overcoming egocentrism. As
Vygotsky ([1934] 1987) wrote, a child “begins to converse with himself as hepreviously conversed with others” (75). This image of self-communication suggests that the dialogical qualities of social speech are retained in private andinner speech. These self-dialogues are enacted as children turn toward themselves as collaborative partners in carrying out their practical activity (Sawyer
and Stetsenko 2018). If this account is accurate, children can flexibly adopt a
panoply of viewpoints as they appropriate dialogic social speech. Children’s
private speech should provide a window onto this process of internalizing andenacting various perspectives.

Implicit Perspective Taking or Explicit
Mental State Terms?
Children’s use of terms relating to mental states like thinking, pretending, andknowing generally begin before a child turns two years old, and such use has
been interpreted as indicating a basic understanding of psychological states, or
nascent theory of mind (Bang, Burns, and Nadig 2013). One of the issues raised
by Fernyhough (2008) concerns whether perspective taking in private speech ismore likely to take implicit or explicit forms. For instance, are children likely tomention mental states (e.g., thinking, feeling, believing, seeing) explicitly when
adopting various perspectives? An example would be the contrastive phrase, “Ithought it went there, but it doesn’t.”
In contrast, one way that implicit perspective shifts may manifest without
reference to obvious mental state terms might be when children ask themselves
questions (e.g., “should this piece go here?”) when working on a puzzle. By asking themselves a question, children adopt an alternative perspective on the task
(perhaps that of a teacher or parent who is prompting them to think about theactivity). It could be said that a child switches from an “I” to a “me” perspective,
or from a subject to an object (of another’s perspective) position. A child represents the other’s perspective through a self-questioning form of private speech,
which in time will become fully internalized, along with the adult perspective.
In the case of children asking themselves questions—and even more so when
they answer themselves (e.g., “yes, it should go there!”)—the dialogical form
and perspective-shifting nature of private speech becomes crystal clear, even in
the absence of mental state terms. As we will see, private speech that embodies

261

262

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYelements of sociodramatic play fits criteria for another form of implicit perspective taking.
The DT model predicts that children’s utterances containing explicit mental
state terms should be rarer than utterances reflecting perspectival differences
without overt reference to mental states. This aligns with the DT model’s view ofmental state discourse as less important to the development of social understanding than dialogues presenting alternative perspectives on reality without necessarily mentioning mental states (Fernyhough 2008). It appears that researchers
have not yet examined the frequency with which children use mental state terms
versus more implicit forms of perspective taking in private speech. My study
examined and compared implicit and explicit perspective-taking private speech.

Sociodramatic Play and Perspective Taking
Another area in which Vygotsky’s work gives us insight into children’s perspective taking is play. Piaget regarded play as a predominance of “assimilation overaccommodation,” meaning children distorted reality to fit with their preexisting
mental schemes, which echoed Piaget’s autism-related definition of egocentrism.
Although Vygotsky’s (2016) writing on play, like his writing on private speech,
does not explicitly address perspective taking, clear implications can be drawn
for children’s growing capacities to shift and simultaneously enact multiple pointsof view. Vygotsky opens the discussion by describing the primary motivation
behind children’s play: desires that cannot be satisfied in real life, given a child’s
stage of development. He writes, “For example the child wants to be in his
mother’s place, or wants to be a rider on a horse. This desire cannot be fulfilled
right now” (7). In play, however, a child can indeed take on the pretend roleof a mother or transform into a “cowboy” who rides a horse. Children create
imaginary situations in which they can experiment with a variety of adult roles(e.g., teacher, astronaut, or fictional creatures) that exist within their culturaland historical milieu.
Vygotsky’s next major point is that, although the imaginary situations
children create in sociodramatic play do not have explicit rules formulated inadvance, children are nevertheless always following hidden rules of behavior.
As Vygotsky writes, “The child imagines herself to be the mother and the dolla child, so she must obey the rules of maternal behavior” (9). In other words,
to play this role children must take the perspective of a mother, as far as they

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

understand it. As Vygotsky noted, “The imaginary situation will always contain rules. In play the child is free. But this is an illusory freedom” (10). With
approval, Vygotsky cites Piaget’s depiction of a child following an inner ruleof self-restraint and self-determination rather than a physical or external law.
Ironically, by creating an imaginary situation and following the rules or perspectives of the roles they are playing, children begin to emancipate themselves fromsituational constraints and achieve maximum joy in play.
Vygotsky gives an example from research of two sisters (age five and seven)
who one day said, “Let’s play sisters.” Although the sisters interacted every day,neither ever did so on the basis that the other girl was her sister. In other words,
they did not think about this relationship. When they had to take on the imaginary role of sisters, however, suddenly they dressed alike, walked around holding hands, and were fully dedicated to displaying their sisterhood. As Vygotsky
wrote, “They enact whatever emphasizes their relationship as sisters vis-a-vis
adults and strangers” (10). This is a clear example of children taking a new perspective on their own behavior—the vantage of adults, strangers, or the outside
world in general. This switch in perspective allowed the girls to play their pretendroles as “sisters” for maximum effect.

Internalizing Multiple Perspectives through PlayIn addition to allowing the assumption of pretend roles of actual others or ofsocial types, with their accompanying perspectives and behavior, play entails
other means of enacting multiple perspectives. Vygotsky writes that when children create an imaginary situation, it is based on “the separation that occurs, inthe preschool period, of the visual and meaning fields” (8). Children see a stick
but act as if it were a horse, which allows them to ride into the sunset. In play,they are guided not by their immediate perception of objects, but rather by themeanings these objects have within the imaginary situation and in the context
of the pretend roles. In Vygotsky’s words, “The basic structure determining thechild’s relationship to reality is radically changed at this crucial point, for his
perceptual structure changes” (13). It appears children hold dual or multiple
perspectives in mind at once—the actual object with which they act (e.g., holding a banana to an ear) and the imaginary object which it represents (e.g., atelephone on which they call a friend).
Such dual perspectives can also apply to children’s emotions during play.

263

264

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AY

Vygotsky writes, “In play a situation is created in which, as Nohl puts it, a dual
affective plane occurs. For example, the child weeps in play as a patient, but revels
as a player” (15). Play enables this dual perspective, the sorrow of a patient in adoctor’s office and a simultaneous enjoyment of the play scenario as oneself. Thisidea resonates with modern work that positions the child as both the creator ofplay and as a subject acting within the play scenario (Kravtsov and Kravtsova
2010). This suggests that play demands the creative coordination and integrationof at least two perspectives on reality. Moreover, Vygotsky writes that children’s
desires and emotions take the perspectives of others who are distant in age orin other qualities, and they grow in the process. Because a child “is faced with aconflict between the rule of the game and what he would do if he could suddenly
act spontaneously” (15), children must constantly manage conflicting emotionaland volitional perspectives as they play.
Vygotsky acknowledged that children do not acquire full-fledged abilities
for symbolic representation all at once, but that play is a transitional activity
in promoting this capacity. Therefore, the object must still have some relation to what it represents in play: “Any stick can be a horse, but, for example,
a postcard can never be a horse for a child . . . for adults who can makeconscious use of symbols, a postcard can be a horse. . . . I can put down amatch and say, “This is a horse.” And that would be enough. For a child amatch cannot stand for a horse: there has to be a stick. Therefore, play is not
symbolism. . . . Properties of things are retained, but . . . the thought becomesthe central point” (14).
This shift from prioritizing the properties of things to prioritizing their imaginary meaning (while retaining awareness of both) implies children are operatingwith multiple perspectives within play. For Vygotsky, children’s activity within play(physical, verbal, and cognitive) undergoes a similar internalization process to thatof social speech: “At school age, play is converted to internal processes, becoming
part of inner speech, logical memory, and abstract thought” (14).
In sum, we can make the case that just as children may internalize multiple perspectives through language, with private speech as an intermediate
link, children may also internalize distinct perspectives through the pretendroles and imaginary situations they enact during play. This notion receives support from a meta-analysis finding that play can enhance awareness of social
roles and empathy via pretend scenarios and perspective taking (Fisher 1992).
Other research suggests play encourages perspective taking because it requires
negotiation between children with divergent views about the play scenario, theCan Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

concurrent representation of objects in multiple ways (e.g., real and pretend),
and the pretend role play in which children act out others’ thoughts, feelings,
and actions (Lillard 1998). As we will see, the private speech that children use
within sociodramatic play may be significant to this process.

The Present Study
This study explored how Vygotsky’s cornerstones of development may reflect
and contribute to children’s emergent perspective taking. Piaget precluded thepossibility that children adopt various perspectives during egocentric speech,
and he saw play as largely egocentric. As we have seen, a Vygotskian perspective
suggests the opposite. This raises the question of whether empirical evidence for
nascent perspective taking is present in children’s private speech—and especiallyin their private speech during sociodramatic play.
In one sense it could be argued that all private speech is dialogical if
addressed to the self, even if its dialogical nature is not obvious from the words
used. Many children state that they speak to themselves, suggesting a dawningawareness of their own self-dialogue. Nevertheless, for the present study, we set
aside the assumption that all private speech involves perspective taking. I did
so to focus on obtaining clear evidence for the dialogical, perspective-shifting
nature of private speech.
Synthesizing the literature reviewed in this article led to several researchquestions: What is the developmental trajectory of children’s perspective-taking
private speech? Does it match Vygotsky’s inverse U-shaped curve for private
speech in general? What are children’s frequencies and proportions of overall
perspective-taking private speech, including subtypes of self-questioning, sociodramatic, and mental-state–term private speech? Do children use more implicit
forms of perspective-taking (i.e., self-questioning and sociodramatic private
speech) or explicit use of mental state terms in private speech? How does children’s perspective-taking private speech differ by activity? Does a sociodramatic
play condition enhance children’s perspective-taking private speech?
MethodI examined written private speech transcripts of preschool children from a previous study (Sawyer and Brooks 2021) to identify instances of perspective taking
in private speech. The children had participated in two activities (fishing and

265

266

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYpuzzles) designed to elicit private speech and compare their motivation in playand nonplay conditions, as I describe in subsequent sections.
Participants
Private speech transcripts came from forty-seven preschool children (thirty-one
boys, sixteen girls), ages 3.7 to 5.5 (M = 55.2 months, SD = 5.9) recruited at childcare and preschool centers in a large city in the northeastern United States. The
sample was ethnically diverse: 38 percent White; 32 percent Asian; 19 percent
Latinx, and 9 percent Black.
Materials
The fishing activity included a magnetized toy fishing rod used to catch magnetized plastic fish from a “pond” designated by a hula-hoop on a rug. Based onshape and weight, some fish proved easy to catch, others were somewhat challenging, and one fish was impossible to catch because of its weight distribution(though it appeared catchable). The puzzle activity featured three, twelve-piece,
barnyard jigsaw puzzles and a twenty-four–piece, zoo-animal jigsaw puzzle. The
barnyard puzzles were moderately challenging, and the zoo animal puzzle wasmore challenging for preschoolers. Two sets of family figures were employed in
the sociodramatic play condition.
ProcedureIn the original study from which the transcripts came, children engaged in theactivities over two video-taped sessions in a separate, familiar room of theirpreschool. Children were randomly assigned to complete both activities (fishingand puzzles) in the same pedagogical condition, either sociodramatic play or task
oriented. The framing for each condition was kept consistent across activities,
as explained in the following paragraphs.
Fishing Activity
In the sociodramatic play condition, I framed the fishing activity as pretend roleplay within an imaginary scenario. I introduced the children to a “family” ofthree toy figures, and I said, “Let’s pretend you are a fisherman or fisherwoman.
This family is hungry, and they love to eat fish. You can feed them by catchingfish from the pond. The more you catch, the more you can all eat together.” In
the task-oriented condition, I framed the fishing activity as a task to complete,with emphasis on extrinsic motivation and individual performance evaluation. I

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

showed the children colorful stickers and said, “You can earn a sticker by doing
the fishing task. I will be counting how many fish you catch, so you should try
as hard as you can. The more fish you catch, the better.” After introducing theactivity, I moved across the room and worked on paperwork, thereby minimizing social interaction while the children engaged in the activities.
Puzzle Activity
In the sociodramatic play condition, I framed the puzzle activity as pretend roleplay within an imaginary scenario, just as in the fishing activity. I introduced thechildren to a different set of three family figures, and I said, “Let’s pretend you arean animal helper. This family lives on a farm, and they had some farm animals.
But they left the barn gate open, and the animals ran away! You can help thefamily get their missing animals back by putting together these animal puzzles.
The more pieces you put together the more animals you will help come home.”
In the task-oriented condition, I framed the puzzle activity as a task to complete,with emphasis on extrinsic motivation and individual performance evaluation. I
showed the children colorful stickers and said, “You can earn a sticker by doing
the puzzle task. I’ll be counting how many puzzle pieces you put together, so
you should try as hard as you can. The more puzzle pieces you put together, thebetter.” In the second portion of puzzles, children received a similar framing of
the more challenging twenty-four–piece puzzle of zoo animals.
Distinguishing Private Speech from Social Speech
In the original study, I had the children’s speech transcribed from video andseparated it into discrete utterances using the criteria from Winsler et al. (2005).
I divided utterances into social and private speech using the method describedin Winsler and his associates (Winsler et al. 2000). I then coded the private
speech utterances and analyzed them for evidence of perspective taking. Consistent with these approaches, I calculated private speech frequencies by dividing perspective-taking utterances by the time (in minutes) children spent oneach activity. I calculated proportions by dividing perspective-taking utterancesby total utterances (and multiplying by 100) to obtain a percentage of overall
private speech.
Coding Perspective Taking in Private Speech
Based on the literature review above, perspective-taking private speech was
operationalized as speech that indicated a shift in perspective, a perspective

267

268

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYother than one’s own, that enacted more than one perspective, or that used
explicit mental state terms. By this criteria, three forms of private speech qualified as clear evidence of perspective taking: self-questioning, sociodramatic, andmental-state–term private speech.
Self-Questioning Private Speech
When children addressed a question to themselves, I coded it as self-questioning
private speech, as I did when they directly answered their preceding question
with a separate utterance. An example would be the children asking themselves“Why can’t I catch these fish?” or “Does this piece go here?” and answering thelatter question with “Yes, it does.”
Sociodramatic Private Speech
When the children’s speech invoked an imaginary scenario, inhabited a pretendrole, or transformed objects symbolically, I coded it as sociodramatic private
speech. This included acting within the imaginary scenario from the script (e.g.,“I’ll get these animals back so the family won’t be sad”), creating new imaginary
scenarios (e.g., “My dinosaur will suck up the water to help me catch the fish”),
interacting with objects as if they were living (e.g., “Here fishy fishy…” or “Comeback home, cow”), and symbolically transforming objects (e.g., “this fishing poleis a crane”). I did not code playful utterances lacking sociodramatic qualities
as sociodramatic speech. For instance, when children played with the sound,rhythm, or melodic nature of vocalizations (e.g., chanting “fishy-wishy-wishy,”singing, or saying playful nonsense words), I did not count it as sociodramatic
speech.
Mental-State-Term Private Speech
Any private speech utterance that contained a term from the comprehensive listof mental state terms in figure 3 from Bang, Barns, and Nadig (2013), I coded
as mental-state–term private speech. An example would be “I think I know how
to get him” (mental-state words in italic).

Results
Developmental Trajectory of Children’s Perspective-Taking Private Speech
To answer the question of the developmental arc of children’s perspective taking

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

Figure 1. Children’s frequencies (left panel) and proportions (right panel) of overall perspectivetaking private speech by age, with quadratic fit line

in private speech, I plotted their frequencies (utterances per min.) and proportions (percentage of total utterances) of perspective-taking private speech against
the children’s ages. As shown in figure 1, children’s overall perspective-taking
private speech peaked between approximately fifty-two and fifty-six months(4.5 years) of age in this sample. Perspective-taking private speech showed theinverse U-shaped curve that Vygotsky found for the trajectory of children’s private speech in general.
Children’s Use of Perspective-Taking Private Speech and Subtypes
Figure 2 displays descriptive statistics for overall perspective-taking private
speech and its three subtypes. Children’s use of perspective taking was substan-

Private Speech Variable

SelfQuestioning PS

Sociodramatic Mental-StatePS

Term PS

Overall
P-Taking PS

Total utterances used by children

145

201

81

427

Number of children who used it (%)

37 (78.7%)

30 (63.8%)

21 (44.7%)

42 (89.4%)

Mean utterances (SD)1.62 (1.82)

2.16 (3.35)

1.72 (2.63)

4.71 (4.42)

Mean utterances per min (SD)0.18 (0.19)

0.21 (0.31)

0.10 (0.16)

0.48 0.48)

Mean proportion of all utterances (SD)8.1% (8.9%)

7.1% (8.8%)

3.8% (5.6%)

18.8% (12.5%)

Note: P-Taking = Perspective-taking. SD = standard deviation. ** p < .01; *** p < .001.
Figure 2. Descriptive statistics for children’s perspective-taking private speech and mental state
terms combined across activities.

269

270

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AY

Self-Questioning Private SpeechSociodramatic Private Speech

FISHINGFISHING

Mental-State-Term Private Speech(mental state terms in bold)

Is there any way to get the fish

The people are getting hungry. I don't

actually?

want them to not survive.

Is this the hard fish of all?

I’m coming (said to family while

FISHINGLet me see how many fish I got.
I didn’t know I could get the nose.

bringing fish).
Or is it the easy fish?

Hey you fishy - how you dare to not let

I think I know how to get him.

me eat you?
What - ?

I think I need Mickey to help.

Why, why does this moving around?

They're eating dinner (the family).

I don't think I can try the first one
and then –I think I almost got it.

Gnum Gnum.
Huh?

Now the family'll only eat these fish -This is a pretend lake.

four.
• Is this real or pretend?
• (answering self) Pretend

Steggy (imaginary dinosaur) can you

This feels very hard.

help? Steggy’s gonna jump in the river.
Hey, the fish swam to the magnet.

Cause I hate this fish.

I am fisher!

I like this part.

Ok, how does this work?

Coochee coochee coo (tickling the fish)

I want to... get that spiky one on the

Where is the hippo?

Oh no, ow! (pretending to the fish who

PUZZLESnose.
I wanna try the purple.

was struck by the fishing rod)
Where this one go?

Hey you knucklehead fish! I’m gonna

I’ll try again.

stare you down. I’m the Daddy.
Where is the flamingo piece?

Surrender, fish!

I'm tryna catch one but it's really...

Now where is… over here?
PUZZLESIs this the same flower?

PUZZLESWhy it’s so easy?

Chicky is going in here.

Let’s see here.

Does it fits?

Bock bock BOCK! (embodying theMaybe we can turn this one and see

chicken)what appears.

I need to go back together. (imitates

I don’t know where it could go

What should I do?

chicken voice of puzzle)• Ok, what’s next?

Yah I'm back together with my(answering) Hairmommy! (imitates chicken voice)• Elephant?
(answering) Okay, no• How about that?
(answering) Nope
• How ‘bout that foot?
(answering) That foot doesn’t fit• This goes like this?

I'm trying to fix your chickens! (shouts

I know it.
I think that belongs over…

in the family’s faces)
Oh no horsie is broken! (because

I think his feet goes down here

puzzle is not put together)
Brother! (makes a sheep talk to theThat’s funny.

brother of the family)
Moo, moo (embodying the cow)

Real tired today.

Don’t see me. (Talking to lion’s eye on

I like the chicken.

(answering) No, I need a road
• Is this right?
(answering) Uh, I think so

the puzzle piece she is holding)• Put it down there maybe?

Wait, the family sees their chicken

Aha! (after fitting piece)

I’m going to try this.

coming back.

Figure 3. Selected examples of perspective-taking private speech subgroups by activity

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

tial, with 18.8 percent of total private speech utterances involving perspective
taking. Subtypes included self-questioning (8.1 percent of utterances), sociodramatic (7.1 percent of utterances), and mental-state-term private speech (3.8
percent). Nearly all children (89.4 percent) used some form of perspective-taking
private speech.
Implicit Perspective Taking versus Explicit Mental-State–Term Use
Figure 3 provides selected examples of children’s private speech utterances fromeach perspective-taking subtype, grouped by activity.
According to DT theory, these subtypes can be classified into two groups:
implicit forms of perspective taking (self-questioning and sociodramatic private speech) and perspective taking that explicitly uses mental-state terminology (mental-state–term private speech). I conducted analyses of covariance(ANCOVAs) to compare children’s use of implicit and explicit forms of perspective taking in private speech. I included child age as a covariate, but it
showed no interaction with private speech subtype. These analyses revealed
that children engaged in significantly more implicit than explicit perspective
taking. Implicit perspective taking predominated in terms of private speechutterance frequency, F(1, 46) = 25.53, p < .001; and proportion of utterances,F(1, 45) = 30.99, p < .001.

FishingPuzzles

F

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

(activity)

Self-Questioning PS/min

0.08(0.14)

0.29(0.32)

17.83***

Self-Questioning PS%

3.58(8.79)

11.5(9.66)

13.83***

Sociodramatic PS/min

0.34(0.56)

0.11(0.24)

7.22*

Sociodramatic PS%

10.3(12.7)

3.82(7.87)

9.11**

Mental-State-Term PS/min

0.08(0.20)

0.12(0.26)

0.44

Mental-State-Term PS%

4.08(10.2)

4.19(7.15)

0.00

Overall P-Taking PS/min

0.49(0.67)

0.52(0.59)

0.07

Overall P-Taking PS%

17.7(16.2)

19.6(14.2)

0.35

Note: n = 45 for all ANCOVAs. P-Taking = perspective-taking. p < .05;***

p < .01; *** p < .001.

Figure 4. Estimated means and standard deviations of perspective-taking private speech subtypes
and totals by activity, with repeated measures ANCOVA (age as covariate) results

271

272

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AY

Perspective-Taking Private Speech by Activity (Fishing versus Puzzles)
Next, I compared children’s mean levels of perspective-taking private speech
between the fishing and puzzle activities, with ANCOVA results shown in figure
4. I included age as a covariate, but it showed no interactions with activity type.
Total perspective-taking private speech and mental-state-term private speech
were equivalent across activities. However, children used significantly more
self-questioning speech (frequency and proportion) on puzzles and significantly
more sociodramatic speech (frequency and proportion) on fishing.
Perspective-Taking Private Speech by Condition(Sociodramatic Play versus Task Oriented)
Finally, I compared children’s perspective-taking private speech between thesociodramatic play and task-oriented conditions, with ANCOVA results infigure 5. Age showed some interactions with condition. Children in the sociodramatic play condition used more frequent sociodramatic private speech, while
self-questioning and mental-state-term private speech were equivalent acrossconditions.

Sociodramatic

Task Oriented

Play
Mean (SD)nMean (SD)F

F(cond)(age x cond)nSelf-Questioning PS/min

0.22 (0.19) 24 0.16 (0.19) 23

1.24

1.15

Self-Questioning PS%

7.23 (8.51) 24 9.74 (8.53) 22

0.95

6.69*

Sociodramatic PS/min

0.32 (0.31) 24 0.11 (0.31) 23

5.58*

1.15

Sociodramatic PS%

8.23 (8.80) 24 6.27 (9.02) 22

0.56

1.73

Mental-State-Term PS/min

0.09 (0.11) 24 0.13 (0.19) 23

0.73

4.87*

Mental-State-Term PS%

4.01 (3.72) 24 4.10 (3.85) 22

0.00

4.54*

Overall P-Taking PS/min

0.62 (0.50) 24 0.40 (0.44) 23

2.77

6.30*

Overall P-Taking PS%

19.2 (11.2) 24 20.2 (13.6) 22

0.10

17.45***

Note: PS/min = Private speech utterances per minute. PS% = Proportion of total private speechutterances. + p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01. Cond = condition. P-Taking = perspective taking.
Figure 5. Estimated means and standard deviations for private speech variables across activities
by pedagogical condition, with ANCOVA (age as covariate) results and interactions

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?
Panel A
Panel B

Figure 6. Children’s frequencies (Panel A), and proportions (Panel B) of overall perspectivetaking private speech for sociodramatic play and task-oriented conditions by age, with quadratic
fit lines for each subgroup

Although children’s overall perspective-taking private speech did not differ
significantly between conditions, interactions between condition and child age
were evident, as shown in figure 6. In panel A, younger children show similarfrequencies of perspective taking in each condition, but as children get older
these levels diverge, with older children in the sociodramatic condition engaging
in increasingly more frequent perspective taking than their same-age peers in thetask-oriented condition. In panel B, younger children used higher proportionsof perspective taking in the task-oriented condition, while older children usedhigher proportions of perspective taking in the sociodramatic play condition.
(These interactions in overall perspective-taking private speech appear to be
driven by the significant interactions among self-questioning and mental-state–term subtypes, as shown in figure 5.)

Discussion
This article aims to make a theoretical and empirical reply to Piaget’s assertion
that Vygotskian theory has little to offer for understanding egocentrism. Guided
by Vygotskian and neo-Vygotskian theory on private speech and sociodramaticplay, the empirical study I have described explored how these two cornerstonesof development might contribute to children’s growth in perspective taking. I
discuss the findings in light of this theoretical framing.

273

274

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYFirst, I found children’s perspective-taking private speech to follow the same
inverted U-shaped curve that Vygotsky discovered for children’s private speechin general. This pattern held for frequency of perspective taking and children’s
proportions of perspective-taking utterances relative to all private speech. Thislatter finding suggests that perspective taking may occupy a smaller portion ofyoung preschoolers’ private speech (e.g., three-year-olds in this sample), a larger
portion for four-year-olds, and again a diminishing portion of five-year-olds’
private speech. Although in need of replication from future studies, such a pattern implies that a developmental process of internalizing various perspectives
occurs within the overall arc of children’s private speech internalization. Such aprospect seems to align with the DT framework in proposing private speech as a
key vehicle for children’s social understanding and perspective-taking capacities.
Children displayed substantial amounts of perspective taking in their private speech, totaling nearly a fifth of all utterances. Implicit forms of perspective taking predominated, in the form of self-questioning and sociodramatic
private speech. Children exhibited significantly less explicit perspective taking,with mental-state–term private speech comprising less than four percent of allutterances. Again, this accords with DT framework’s predictions that utterancesfeaturing overt mental state terms should be fewer than utterances that engage
different perspectives without explicit mention of mental states. This study provides the first direct comparison, to the author’s knowledge, of implicit andexplicit forms of perspective taking in private speech. The evidence supports
the DT model’s assertion that dialogic speech enacting distinct perspectives(even if implicit) is more critical than overt mental-state discourse for children’sdevelopment of social understanding.
Across the fishing and puzzle activities, children’s overall levels ofperspective-taking private speech were quite consistent. The subtypes, however,showed distinct patterns. While mental-state–term private speech was consistentacross activities, children used significantly more self-questioning speech on
puzzles and significantly more sociodramatic speech while fishing. Although
speculative, it could be that different forms of perspective taking are more relevant or useful during particular activities. In this case, self-questioning private
speech may have helped children enact an adult’s perspective, for instance thatof a parent or teacher, on their puzzle activity. Children’s questions often seemed
to contain cognitive content such as planning, observing, and strategizing about
what piece to place next, which appeared well suited to the puzzle activity. Children’s style of posing questions to themselves—and often answering them—Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

called to mind typical adult-child interactions in which adults use questions toprompt children to plan their next action or to direct their attention to particular
aspects of the puzzle that would help them complete it. In contrast, children’s
more abundant sociodramatic private speech during the fishing activity may
have reflected the fact that the fishing materials were quite colorful and playful
in nature and may have encouraged children to create their own imaginary scenarios and characters, even if they were not in the sociodramatic play condition.
Finally, did the sociodramatic play condition enhance children’s
perspective-taking private speech relative to the task-oriented condition? Herethe answer is equivocal. On one hand, self-questioning and mental-state-term
private speech did not differ between conditions. On the other hand, children
did use more frequent sociodramatic private speech in the sociodramatic playcondition. This suggests that framing the activity with an imaginary scenario andpretend roles encourages children to engage the various perspectives implied bysociodramatic play. Children entered and operated within the pretend fishing
scenario with a hungry family and within the scenario of the farm family wholost its animals, in both cases enacting perceptions of objects and situations assimultaneously real and imaginary. Children took the perspectives of charactersin pretend roles including fishermen and fisherwomen, the fish themselves,various members of the fish-eating family and the farm family, the families asa whole, barnyard and zoo animals, and even new characters that they createdthemselves. The latter includes an imaginary dinosaur and Mickey Mouse, bothof whom came to help the children catch fish from the pond. In sum, the sociodramatic condition appeared to enrich this tapestry of multiple perspectives on
people, objects, and reality itself.
This inquiry followed the classic studies of other post-Vygotskian researchers who conducted experiments comparing children’s self-regulation and memory in play and nonplayful conditions. As reviewed by Bodrova and her associates(Bodrova, Germeroth, and Leong 2013), five-year-old children assigned thepretend role of a soldier guarding a military object managed to stand still much
longer than children merely told to stand still (Manuilenko 1975), and a later
study (Ivanova 2000) replicated this. Similarly, children recalled more items froma grocery list within a grocery store play scenario than when they were asked
simply to memorize the list (Istomina 1975). My present study had a constraint
similar to these previous experiments: To attain a clear comparison of children’s
behavior in play and nonplay conditions, I as the experimenter suggested theplayful framings for each activity instead of the children inventing them. In

275

276

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYaddition, each playful scenario in these experiments implied a clear goal, suchas standing still, remembering a list, or catching fish and completing puzzles in
the present study. Inevitably, this differs from naturalistic conditions in whichchildren choose more freely among themselves (though often with adult guidance) the roles and scenarios they play out, the potential goals of their play, andif and when they will engage in sociodramatic play at all.
Thus, the experimental approximation of sociodramatic play featured inthis study must be considered a limitation. As Elkonin (2005) mentions, experimental work on sociodramatic role play has been difficult, likely because of challenges in representing its full scope. Within this constraint, however, children’s
playful creativity became evident in the way they extended and modified theinitially presented imaginary scenario or created new scenarios. As discussed
in Sawyer and Brooks (2021), children invented entirely new roles and situations (e.g., “my dinosaur will suck up the water to help me catch the fish”), andsymbolically transformed objects in ways far afield from their initial meaning(e.g., “this fishing pole is a crane”). Moreover, given that sociodramatic play was
not operationalized in its full scope, the enhancement of sociodramatic private
speech and associated perspective taking in the play condition could be considered even more notable. We might expect play and playful private speech inchildren’s everyday settings to have an even greater impact in promoting perspective taking and lessening egocentrism than in this experimental approximation.
Somewhat curiously, overall perspective-taking private speech showed aninteraction between children’s age and their assigned experimental condition. In
terms of perspective-taking frequency, younger children were similar between
conditions; as their ages increased, however, children in the sociodramatic-playcondition showed increasingly frequent perspective taking while their peers in
the task-oriented condition declined in perspective taking. This suggests thatsociodramatic play enhanced perspective taking specifically among older preschoolers, who may be more capable than younger children of engaging multiple
perspectives through private speech during play.
In terms of proportions, younger children showed higher percentages ofperspective taking in the task-oriented condition, while older children showed
higher percentages in the sociodramatic condition. While older preschoolers
may be more developmentally prepared to engage the myriad of perspectives
offered by sociodramatic play, what might explain younger children’s greater
perspective taking in the task-oriented condition? This pattern appears driven
by self-questioning and mental-state–term private speech, of which younger

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

children in the task-oriented condition used more. While again speculative,in the task-oriented context, young children may rely more on mental-state–term and self-questioning modes of perspective taking than they would in asociodramatic-play context, when sociodramatic private speech appears more
likely to come to the foreground.
An alternate explanation for this interaction involves the developmental trajectory of private speech becoming internalized as inner speech. By thisaccount, young children in the task-oriented context may have used more
perspective-taking private speech (especially mental-state–term and selfquestioning subtypes), while older children in the same condition conducted
perspective taking silently via inner speech. This would explain the initiallyhigh and then decreasing curve of perspective taking in the task-oriented condition. Conversely, young children in the sociodramatic-play condition may
have relied on sociodramatic speech for perspective taking, but at initially low
levels because this form of perspective taking lies slightly outside their zone ofproximal development. In contrast, older children in the condition may havebeen in the developmental sweet spot for sociodramatic speech, which drove
their higher levels of overall perspective-taking private speech. We need further
studies to sort out these possibilities.
The results of this initial foray into examining children’s perspective-taking
private speech in sociodramatic and task-oriented contexts should be viewed asoffering preliminary support for key predictions of the DT framework. These
include the classic inverted U-shape trajectory of perspective taking within
private speech that portends a process of internalizing perspectives as private
speech itself undergoes an internalization process. Second, the preponderanceof private speech utterances using implicit forms of perspective taking overutterances containing explicit mental-state terms suggests a dynamic in which
the specific words that children use in their private speech are less important
than the perspectives expressed within them. I suggest that researchers examine
additional potential forms of both implicit and explicit perspective taking in children’s speech, so that we might achieve a fuller inventory of the possible forms
that perspective taking may assume. If researchers have access to transcripts ofprivate speech from previous studies, these can be reexamined and reinterpreted
from the lens of perspective taking.
In neo-Vygotskian theory, sociodramatic play is regarded as the leading
activity for preschoolers—the most powerful generator of developmental growth
in multiple areas. Sociodramatic private speech may similarly be a leading form

277

278

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYof self-directed speech. Appearing especially enhanced and perspective richduring sociodramatic play, sociodramatic speech may serve a pivotal role inenacting, adopting, and shifting among the various social, emotional, and cognitive perspectives. In sum, far from representing a hangover from egocentrism,
children’s private speech appears to be a key pathway through which children
can imaginatively refract and internalize the multiplicity of perspectives that
accompany and facilitate practical human activity.

References
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl
Emerson.
———. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist. Translated by Vern W. McGee.
Bang, Janet, Jesse Burns, and Aparna Nadig. 2013. “Brief Report: Conveying Subjective Experience in Conversation: Production of Mental State Terms and Personal
Narratives in Individuals with High Functioning Autism.” Journal of Autism andDevelopmental Disorders 43:1732–40. doi 10.1007/s10803-012-1716–4.
Bergen, Doris. 2002. “The Role of Pretend Play in Children’s Cognitive Development.”
Early Childhood: Research and Practice 4:1–13.
Bodrova, Elena, Carrie Germeroth, and Deborah J. Leong. 2013. “Play and Self-Regulation: Lessons from Vygotsky.” American Journal of Play 6:111–23.
Carpendale, Jeremy I. M., and Charlie Lewis 2004. “Constructing an Understanding of
Mind: The Development of Children’s Social Understanding within Social Interaction.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27:79–151.
Carpendale, Jeremy, and Charlie Lewis. 2006. How Children Develop Social Understanding.
Carpendale, Jeremy, Charlie Lewis, Noah Susswein, and Joanna Lunn. 2009. “Talking
and Thinking: The Role of Speech in Social Understanding.” In Private Speech,
Executive Function, and the Development of Verbal Self-Regulation, edited by Adam
Winsler, Charles Fernyhough, and Ignacio Montero, 83–94.
Elkonin, Daniil. B. 2005. “The Subject of Our Research: The Developed Form of Play.”
Translated by Lydia Razran Stone. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology 43:22–48.
Fernyhough, Charles. 2008. “Getting Vygotskian about Theory of Mind: Mediation, Dialogue, and the Development of Social Understanding.” Developmental
Review 28:225–62.
Fernyhough, Charles, and Elizabeth Meins. 2009. “Private Speech and Theory of Mind:
Evidence for Developing Interfunctional Relations.” In Private Speech, Executive
Functioning, and the Development of Verbal Self-Regulation, edited by Adam Winsler, Charles Fernyhough, and Ignacio Montero, 95–104.

Can Private Speech and Sociodramatic Play Promote Perspective Taking?

Fisher, Edward P. 1992. “The Impact of Play on Development: A Meta-Analysis.” Play& Culture 5:159–81.
Iao, Lai-San, Yuen Ting Tsang, Mei Yin Wong, and Hin Yui Ho. 2015. “Talking While
Thinking about Another’s Mind in Preschoolers: Evidence of Getting Vygotskian
about Social Cognition.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 31:1–8.
Istomina, Z. M. 1975. “The Development of Voluntary Memory in Preschool-Age Children.” Soviet Psychology 13:5–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-040513045.
Ivanova, E. F. 2000. “The Development of Voluntary Behavior in Preschoolers: Repetition of Z. V. Manuilenko’s Experiments.” Journal of Russian & East European Psychology 38:6–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-040538026.
Kesselring, Thomas, and Ulrich Müller. 2011. “The Concept of Egocentrism in the Context of Piaget’s Theory.” New Ideas in Psychology 29:327–45.
Kravtsov, G. G., and E. E. Kravtsova. 2010. “Play in L. S. Vygotsky’s Nonclassical Psychology.” Journal of Russian & East European Psychology 48:25–41.
Lillard, Angeline S. 1998. “Playing with a Theory of Mind.” In Multiple Perspectives
on Play in Early Childhood Education, edited by Olivia N. Saracho and Bernard
Spodek, 11–33.
Manfra, Louis, and Adam Winsler. 2006. “Preschool Children’s Awareness of Private
Speech.” International Journal of Behavioral Development 30:537–49.
Manuilenko, Z. V. 1975. “The Development of Voluntary Behavior by Preschool-Age
Children.” Soviet Psychology and Psychiatry 13:65–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/
RPO1061-0405130465.
Müller, Ulrich, and Jeremy I. M. Carpendale. 2000. “The Role of Social Interaction in
Piaget’s Theory: Language for Social Cooperation and Social Cooperation for
Language.” New Ideas in Psychology 18:139–56.
Piaget, Jean. 1923. Le langage et la pensée chez l’enfant [The Language and Thought of
the Child].
———. 1924. Le jugement et le raisonnement chez l’enfant [Judgment and Reasoning in
the Child].
———. (1926) 1929. The Child’s Conception of the World.
———. (1962) 2000. “Commentary on Vygotsky’s Criticisms of Language and Thoughtof the Child and Judgment and Reasoning in the Child.” New Ideas in Psychology 18:241–59.
Sawyer, Jeremy. 2017. “I Think I Can: Preschoolers’ Private Speech and Motivation in
Playful Versus Non-Playful Contexts.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 38:84–
96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2016.09.004.
Sawyer, Jeremy, and Patricia J. Brooks. 2021. “Sociodramatic Play Enhances Preschoolers’ Private Speech and Motivation across Activities.” Cognitive Development 59:
1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101073.
Sawyer, Jeremy, and Anna Stetsenko. 2018. “Revisiting Marx and Problematizing
Vygotsky: A Transformative Approach to Language and Speech Internalization.”
Language Sciences 70:143–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2018.05.003.
Van der Veer, René. 1996. “Vygotsky and Piaget: A Collective Monologue.” Human

279

280

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AY

Development 39:237–42.
Vygotsky, Lev. S. (1934) 1987. “Thinking and Speech.” In The Collected Works of L. S.
Vygotsky, Volume 1: Problems of General Psychology, edited by Robert W. Rieber
and Aaron S. Carton. Translated by Norris Minick.
———. 2016. “Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child.” International
Research in Early Childhood Education 7:3–25.
Vygotsky, Lev S., and Alexander Luria. 1929. “The Function and Fate of Egocentric
Speech.” In Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Psychology, 464–65.
http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0001-9199-E
Winsler, Adam. 2009. “Still Talking to Ourselves after All These Years: A Review ofCurrent Research on Private Speech.” In Private Speech, Executive Functioning,
and the Development of Verbal Self-Regulation, edited by Adam Winsler, Charles
Fernyhough, and Ignacio Montero, 3–41.
Winsler, Adam, Jesús René De León, Beverly A. Wallace, Martha P. Carlton, and Angela
Willson-Quayle. 2003. “Private Speech in Preschool Children: Developmental
Stability and Change, Across Task Consistency, and Relations with Classroom
Behaviour.” Journal of Child Language 30:583–608.
Winsler, Adam, Rafael M. Diaz, David J. Atencio, Elizabeth M. McCarthy, and Lori
Adams Chabay. 2000. “Verbal Self-Regulation over Time in Preschool Children
at Risk for Attention and Behavior Problems.” Journal of Child Psychology andPsychiatry 41:875–86.
Winsler, Adam, Charles Fernyhough, Erin M. McClaren, and Erin Way. 2005. “Private
Speech Coding Manual.” Unpublished document. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/download/69976790/PSCodingManual.pdf
Winsler, Adam, and Jack Naglieri. 2003. “Overt and Covert Verbal Problem‐Solving
Strategies: Developmental Trends in Use, Awareness, and Relations with Task
Performance in Children Aged 5 to 17.” Child Development 74:659–78.