Children's Understanding of the Appearance-Reality Distinction

외양과 실재 간의 구분에 대한 아동의 이해

The purpose of the present study was to explore the development of knowledge about the appearance-reality distinction and its relation to children's developing theory of mind. The subjects were 90 children, 15 boys and 15 girls each at the ages of 3, 4, and 5. The performance of the appearance-reality distinction was compared on illusory object, color, pretend event, and picture tasks. The data were collected by individual testing and analyzed by two-way ANOVA with repeated measures. The results showed that there were significant differences between 3-and 4-year-olds in the appearance-reality distinction, while there was no significant difference according to gender or type of tasks. It was also found that children at the age of 3 and 4, committed phenomenism errors more often than intellectual realism errors, while 5 year olds did not show particular differences.