Development of Knowledge about the Appearance-Reality Distinction

TLDR

Studies of the appearance‑reality distinction show that knowledge develops gradually, with 11‑12‑year‑olds and college students possessing rich, explicit understanding, while younger children lack it. The study finds that 3‑year‑olds lack appearance‑reality understanding and fail simple tasks, 6‑7‑year‑olds can solve tasks but struggle to articulate the concepts, whereas 11‑12‑year‑olds and college students possess rich, explicit knowledge, and performance on appearance‑reality tasks correlates with perspective‑taking ability.

Abstract

7 studies of the acquisition of knowledge about the appearance-reality distinction suggest the following course of development. Many 3-year-olds seem to possess little or no understanding of the distinction. They fail the simplest Appearance-Reality (AR) tasks and are unresponsive to efforts to teach them the distinction. Skill in solving simple AR tasks is highly correlated with skill in solving simple perceptual Perspective-taking (PT) tasks; this suggests the hypothesis that the ability to represent the selfsame stimulus in two different, seemingly incompatible ways may underlie both skills. children of 6-7 years have acquired both skills but nevertheless find it very difficult to reflect on and talk about such appearance-reality concepts as "looks like," "really and truly," and "looks different from the way it really and truly is." In contrast, children of 11-12 years, and to an even greater degree college students, possess a substantial body of rich, readily accessible, and explicit knowledge in this area.