Both 3- and 4-year-olds were equally successful from both the self and other perspectives. The distinction
between planning from one’s own perspective and planning from another’s perspective may
only make a difference in future planning tasks that involve greater episodic content. For example,
Russell and colleagues (2010) measured episodic future thinking by asking children to envision different
spatial perspectives and found that 4-year-olds made more accurate choices when envisioning a
spatial point of view from another child’s perspective different from their own. In Russell and colleagues’
study, it is possible that children’s original experience with the spatial environment could
have interfered with their ability to imagine themselves in the same environment from a different
point of view. However, our study did not require spatial perspective taking and all of the locations
were in view at all times, and so children did not have the additional spatial demands evident in past
research (Russell et al., 2010; Suddendorf et al., 2011). In addition, in both the self and other conditions,
children actively moved dolls through the spatial environment, further reducing the experiential
differences in these conditions.