TY - JOUR A2 - Moldrich, Randal X. AU - Bigozzi, Lucia AU - Di Cosimo, Alessandra AU - Vettori, Giulia PY - 2016 DA - 2016/12/08 TI - 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 SP - 5270924 VL - 2016 AB - 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. SN - 2090-3987 UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/5270924 DO - 10.1155/2016/5270924 JF - Child Development Research PB - Hindawi Publishing Corporation KW - ER -