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.