But I do in real life. Not so much my physical appearance though this is also important but more about the way I carry myself, the way I interact with others. I want people to know that I am a classy lady who is intelligent, engaging and warm. Like right now my depression has come back so I feel like……you know. They already know. Although I will sometimes, if I want to protect or lessen the perceived burden of any troubles I have. Anyway, this is where my thoughts have been for the past few days: why appearances can be deceiving.
So I had to share it and write it down. And to see if anyone else can relate. Literature highlights the onset of theory of mind ToM in preschool time [ 38 ]. For this reason, we decided to conduct this study focusing on that interesting period.
However, two important points should be underlined: firstly, even though this last aspect of the theory of mind construct has been widely investigated, AR distinction understanding remains in the background. Secondly, the debate is still open about the relationship between AR distinction and FB understanding. Regarding the first aim, we expected significantly low comprehension of the distinction between appearance and reality for 3-year-old children and better performance for 5-year-old children, with 4-year-old children improving significantly.
Regarding the second aim, in line with literature [ 29 , 36 ] we expected an improvement between 3 and 5 years to cross all the tests, with a higher proportion of children that better comprehend AR distinction than FB. Furthermore, in line with literature [ 30 , 31 ], we assumed that the use of puppets in false-belief task task 2a could facilitate a greater understanding and better performance thanks to their capacity to stimulate interest in children.
Children with certified disabilities were not included. Parents and school authorities, as well as the children themselves, gave consent to participate in the study. The authorities also gave consent to participate in the study. The following tasks were individually administered to the children in a quiet space in the school, but outside the classroom.
In a preliminary session prior to the examination with other children, we observed that children rapidly learn how to respond to this kind of test, so we prefer to use a single measure of AR. In AR task the color of an object changes by means of a colored filter.
In the test administered for this research a red glass containing milk was used. The glass of milk was placed on a table so that the participant could see the contents but could not look inside.
The experimenter showed each subject the glass saying that it contained milk. Answers were coded as follows. The experimenter told the participant that Maria wanted to go for a walk and before leaving she put a ball in a colored box.
Maria was then moved under the table so as to make her absence and inability to see what would happen clear. Another puppet, Francesco, takes the ball from the box and puts it in the trash. Responses were recorded, transcribed, and then coded. Participants were presented with pictures and were read the accompanying text, which told a parallel story to the one previously presented. The task was administered using a commonplace tube of candy that actually contained pencils.
After the participant had said that the tube contained candies, the experimenter asked the participant to open the tube in order to check its contents.
In the story a situation of deception is told that is an indicator of theory of mind. The stories are also used to evaluate the participants who were asked to retell them.
Once upon a time, in a wheat field, a little sparrow was greedily pecking ripe wheat grains. A real gentleman never begins to eat if he is not clean! Then the clever little sparrow frr… frr… flew away immediately. So the cat understood he had been tricked and in his heart he swore not to be tricked again. So, since that day, cats always clean their muzzle after their meal and not before!
To evaluate the deception comprehension, we referred to [ 8 ]; see also Table 2. Stories were evaluated in terms of structure, cohesion, and coherence in producing stories. To analyze story structure, we used [ 42 ]. To analyze levels of cohesion in stories, the categories proposed by Halliday and Hasan [ 43 ] were used in order to detect cohesion among the elements of the story e.
The amount of cohesiveness used by the participants, in proportion to the number of words produced, led to four increasing levels of cohesion: absent, low, medium, and high, corresponding to scores ranging from 0 to 3. Finally, to assess global story coherence, the sentences in the retold and transcribed stories were identified and their agreement was detected [ 44 ].
The amount of incoherence, proportional to the total number of sentences, produced four score categories ranging from 0 to 3 , indicating growing levels of coherence absent, low, medium, and high. Given the reduced variability of the scores, distribution frequencies were considered on a nominal dichotomic scale.
Several comparisons were made on the standardized adjusted residuals calculated in order to better understand the relationship between the variables. Regarding the second aim, adjusted standardized residuals of different contingency tables were carried out. To summarize the data on developmental trend and to introduce those on the comparison between tests, Table 1 reports the results obtained in each test for all three age groups considered.
Regarding all the false-belief tasks, the standardized adjusted residuals show a constant increase of the comprehension of the false belief as the age increases, with lack of comprehension being more at 3 years and a more frequent presence of comprehension at 5 years Table 3. Concerning the comparison between the comprehension of the appearance-reality concept in the different tasks separately for each class of age 3 years old vs.
This study aimed to highlight the different levels of performance in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children in an appearance-reality task. At 5 years, there is a tendency for answers that indicate the presence of appearance-reality distinction understanding. These results support the hypothesis that in preschool children a substantial improvement in performance is found between 3 and 5 years.
For this purpose, it is important to consider that the test used, focusing on the characteristic of an object the color , promotes the tendency to pay attention to the perceptually most salient aspect, appearance [ 45 ]. Briefly, the results lead us to hypothesize that younger children have difficulty in mentally manipulating two conflicting representations and they try to resolve this by focusing only on the most salient aspect.
So, we could summarize by saying that 5-year-old children, although doing well in the tests, still tend to analyze objects and situations sequentially, considering appearance as a reality in a given moment.
It is clear that these children have not yet fully acquired the reversibility of thought [ 33 ], but they have the basic skills to develop a more structured and conscious ability to distinguish and simultaneously manage all possible representations of an object or an event, with all the implications that this entails. The ability to consider and manage different representations, on the other hand, concerns not only recognition of the distinction between appearance and reality, but also the recognition of false belief.
So, they show their understanding, but at the same time they are not able to fully master and simultaneously manage both conflicting representations. The second purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between AR performances and FB performances unexpected location, deceptive content, and deception comprehension tasks performances.
Results partially confirmed our hypotheses. An improvement between 3 and 5 years across all the tests emerged, but only children at 4 and 5 years show that they master AR distinction understanding better than FB comprehension in the other tests.
These results seem in line with another finding see [ 29 , 36 ] that highlights developmental lags between FB and AR task. Regarding 3-year-old children, comparison between AR tasks and FB tasks shows a similar pattern of answers, in line with [ 28 , 29 ]: those who correctly respond to the AR task also do so in FB task, and, on the contrary, those who fail tend to fail even in the others.
The introduction of more familiar and interesting materials does not facilitate performance of younger children on the test, leading to hypotheses that the task is beyond the reach of the general cognitive level of young children. Finally, we have to underline that nearly half of the participants did not want to tell the story after hearing it from the researcher. Most were children of 3 years. On the other hand, although the majority of 5-year-old children were able to tell the story proposed by the investigator, very few understood the deception in the narrative.
This progression is in line with literature where an improvement in the ability to tell and retell stories between 3 and 5 years is highlighted [ 50 , 51 ]. Beyond narrative competence, results showed no improvement in performance in the deception understanding task nor from 3 to 5 years old.
This finding leads us to suppose that all children have, likewise, encountered significant difficulty with this kind of task. We might think that the difficulty of one test added to that of the other, making comprehension of the deception task too hard even for 5-year-old children.
According to Siegal [ 52 ], in addition, some elements of the procedures used in standard tests, such as the type of questions, the kind of objects used, and the method of the tasks, might contribute to the difficulties shown in their conduct by younger children [ 47 ]. On the other hand, they also suggest that the difficulties arising for younger children may be due to the use, in all standard tests of verbal response mode.
To explain these reactions, it may be useful to refer to the distinction between implicit and explicit understanding of theory of mind proposed by [ 53 ]. The importance of theory of mind is central in child development for its relevance to comprehension of the surrounding world. One of the fields that lends itself to stimulate the understanding of appearance and reality is scientific learning, such as in subjects like biology and chemistry [ 55 ].
With this study, it was shown how 3-year-old children have difficulty in mastering two conflicting representations. At this age in fact children have not yet mastered a decentralized and reversible thought, necessary for the formation of scientific concepts and the construction and reconstruction of knowledge about the world, both physical and social [ 56 ].
Science learning in kindergarten can also have moments of observation of natural situations, where children spontaneously grasp the understanding of the difference between appearance and reality. Future research could consider systematic observations on a larger sample in natural situations, as close as possible to a real-life situation or practice detections in spontaneous life conversations and in particular in natural situations of exploration of nature.
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Article of the Year Award: Outstanding research contributions of , as selected by our Chief Editors. Read the winning articles. Special Issues. Academic Editor: Randal X. Received 06 Jul Revised 24 Sep Accepted 07 Nov Published 08 Dec And they probably are. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Rent this article via DeepDyve. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. A distant if now unrecognizable ancestor of this paper was first read at the 12th Annual Louisiana Philosophy Convention in October, Steve Fuller also offered comments on an intermediate version.
I am especially grateful to Norton Nelkin who has read and commented on several versions. He should not be held complicit, however. Reprints and Permissions. Crumley, J.
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