Social perspective-taking performance: Construct, measurement, and relations with academic performance and engagement

Social perspective-taking (SPT), the social-cognitive skill of inferring, considering, and evaluating others' perspectives, is critical in allowing students to engage not only with others in social interactions, but also with many academic materials and activities. However, due to complex conceptualizations of SPT, as well as challenges to its measurement, little research has examined the role of SPT in student learning. Using a new measure, the Assessment of Social Perspective-taking Performance (ASPP), this article presents evidence that SPT can be conceptualized as a set of measurable developmental performative skills relevant to classroom learning in early adolescence: articulation of actors' beliefs/intentions and positioning of actors in their social contexts. Examination of its psychometric properties provides evidence that ASPP can precisely assess students' SPT performance across varying levels of those skills. Lastly, we find positive associations of SPT with academic engagement and standardized test scores.