In their own words: pre-school children’s verbalizations of the appearance-reality distinction

Little is known about pre-school children’s verbalizations of their understanding of the appearance-reality distinction in extended discourse. In this study, children below and above 4; 6 years were asked to verbalize the content of four brief video clips of actors handling a deceptive object, e.g. a sponge that looked like a rock. The procedure reduced the potential discourse-pragmatic difficulties associated with responding in the standard appearance-reality task. In this free-format condition, the children’s responses were scored as correct if they appropriately combined two labels for the deceptive object in a contrastive sentence. The children also participated in two standard appearance-reality tasks either before or after the free-format condition. The results showed that (1) the younger group did better in the free-format than in the standard condition, (2) the younger group performed better in the standard task when it was presented after the free-format condition, and (3) the older group performed equally well in both conditions. Thus, in the present study, the younger children, who would ordinarily fail the standard task, revealed an understanding of the difference between appearance and reality. These results are discussed in light of the developing discourse-pragmatic abilities of this age group.