Role-taking as a developmental task stems from the conservation and decentering concepts of Piaget's cognitive theory as they have been extended from impersonal to interpersonal situations. The ability to take the perspective of another person in interpersonal situations -- to decenter --increases with age in normal children. By contrast, marked developmental delays in role-taking ability have been found in nonnormal groups of children ranging from the emotionally disturbed to the mentally retarded and juvenile delinquents. Subjects, matched on the basis of their scores on the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) Test, were randomly assigned to treatment of control groups. The treatment groups made up skits, viewed their productions on videotape, and replayed the skits until each member had played each part. The control groups created videotaped documentaries about the institutions, but did not particpate as actors in the productions to avoid practice in role-taking. As predicted, a large proportion of the subjects (73 percent) exhibit role-taking deficits; however, there was no significant correlation between role-taking errors and latency scores on the MFF Test. Results suggest either that there is no systematic relationship between role-taking and self-control, or that the self-control measures used in this research were inadequate. A list of 12 references is included. (ERIC author abstract modified)