A Transitional Period in the Development of the Appearance-Reality Distinction

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Abstract
In this study we tested two related hypotheses about 5-year-olds' competencies concerning the appearance-reality distinction: (a) although they clearly have developed some understanding of the distinction by this age, they are not as sensitive to it as adults are, and consequently require more prompting to access and use it; (b) they are more apt than adults to construe an object currently viewed under illusory conditions non-hierarchically and successively as A (how it presently appears) now and R (how it really is) at other times, rather than hierarchically and simultaneously as A in appearance now and R in reality now. Five-year-olds and adults watched the experimenter change the apparent shape, colour, and size of different objects; for example, she caused a straight stick to look bent by displaying it behind a prism. Consistent with the first hypothesis, the children were more apt than the adults to say, prior to any mention of appearance vs. reality, that the displayed stick "is" bent and "is" a different shape from before. Consistent with the second hypothesis, they were also likelier to think that "right now, for real" the stick "is" bent, even after having previously given correct answers to appearance questions and to similar reality questions that did not contain the "right now" phrase. These results suggest that there is a transitional period in the development of the appearance-reality distinction that begins around 5 years of age.