Appearances Are Deceiving: Observing the World as It Looks and How It Really Is—Theory of Mind Performances Investigated in 3-, 4-, and 5-Year-Old Children

Abstract

Appearance-reality (AR) distinction understanding in preschoolers is worth of further consideration. This also goes for its relationship with false-belief (FB) understanding. This study helped fill these gaps by assessing 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children’s performances on an appearance-reality distinction task and by investigating relationships with unexpected location, deceptive content, and deception comprehension task performances. 91 preschoolers participated in this study divided into 3 groups: (1) 37 children, M-age 3.4 years; (2) 23 children, M-age 4.5 years; (3) 31 children, M-age 5.4 years. A developmental trend was found where appearance-reality distinction understanding was significantly influenced by age. If wrong answers were particularly high by 3-year-old children, they greatly decreased by 4- and 5-year-old children. 3-year-old children also tended to fail in FB tasks; instead 4- and 5-year-old children performed AR tasks better than FB tasks. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

A study of the ability to judge surface emotion and real emotion in children between four to six years of age (Estudio sobre la capacidad de identificar y diferenciar entre emociones visibles y emociones reales de los niños de cuatro a seis años)

“…Asimismo, se creía que el desarrollo de la teoría de la mente infantil es la base para comprender el engaño (Seidenfeld et al, 2014). Numerosos estudios señalan que solo después de que el niño haya desarrollado la teoría de la mente (es decir, comprende las creencias falsas de los otros), estos adquieren la capacidad de engañar (Bigozzi et al, 2016; Frye & Moore, 2014; Lewis & Osborne, 2010; Polak & Harris, 1999; Sodian et al, 1991). Por tanto, podemos afirmar que la simulación es un proceso cognitivo más simple que el engaño y que la comprensión de la simulación por parte de los niños puede existir antes del desarrollo de la teoría de la mente, pero la comprensión del engaño se desarrolla más tarde.…”

“…Simultaneously, it was believed that the development of children’s theory of mind is the basis for understanding deception (Seidenfeld et al, 2014). A large number of studies have pointed out that it’s only after the theory of mind (i.e., understanding of the false beliefs of others) has developed completely that children get the ability to deceive (Bigozzi et al, 2016; Frye & Moore, 2014; Lewis & Osborne, 2010; Polak & Harris, 1999; Sodian et al, 1991). Therefore, it can be argued that pretence is a simpler cognitive process than deception and that children’s understanding of pretence can exist before the development of the theory of mind, but the understanding of deception develops later.…”

The Validation of the Free Fantasy Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents: From Imaginary Playmate to “Dreamtime”

“…It has been argued, however, that none of these theories alone can explain pretense–reality confusions and that these are best explained in terms of the combined influences of cognitive availability, empirical evidence of reality, context, affect and individual differences (Bourchier and Davis, 2002). Moreover, probably not all children develop the capacity to correctly distinguish between reality and fantasy at the same speed and in the same way (Bourchier and Davis, 2000; Bigozzi et al, 2016).…”

Mental State Talk Structure in Children’s Narratives: A Cluster Analysis

“…In this study we analyse whether mental state terms are independent from each other or conversely whether mental state talk has an underlying structure, in which terms are organized and clustered together. ToM greatly develops during preschool and school years [37,44], as well as the relationship between ToM and language [45]. To control for this effect, we measured children's mental state talk in narratives twice in a school year and verified the stability of mental state talk.…”