Developmental Psychology
2000, Vol. 36, No. 5, 547-560
Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0012-1649/00/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0012-1649.36.5.547
Three-Year-Olds' Difficulty With the Appearance-Reality Distinction:
Is It Real or Is It Apparent?
Felicity Sapp, Kang Lee, and Darwin Muir
Queen's University
Four experiments investigated 3-year-olds' understanding of the appearance-reality distinction using
both J. Flavell, F. Green, and J. Flavell's (1986) typical verbal response paradigm and a new, nonverbal
response paradigm. Both paradigms require verbal questioning, but the former involves a verbal response
and the latter a nonverbal one. In the nonverbal paradigm, children were shown a deceptive object and
asked to respond, nonverbaily, to 2 different functional requests, 1 concerning the object's apparent
property and 1 its real property. In the verbal paradigm, children were asked to state what the object
looked like and what it really was. In the verbal paradigm, children were about 30% correct (a rate
matching that in the literature), whereas over 90% of the same children were correct in the nonverbal
paradigm. Participating in the verbal paradigm first had a detrimental effect on the children's performance in the nonverbal paradigm, but the reverse order had no effect. These results suggest that
3-year-olds can represent two conflicting properties of a deceptive object and thus understand the
appearance-reality distinction in the nonverbal domain.
dren's communication with others (Beal, 1988). Distinguishing
between private and public emotions enables children to act appropriately in social situations that call for emotional dissemblance
(e.g., in order to be polite; Saarni, 1988).
Flavell and his colleagues (Flavell, 1986, 1988, 1993; Flavell,
Flavell, & Green, 1983; Taylor & Flavell, 1984) were the pioneers
in this area and have been the major contributors to the literature
on the development of children's ability to make A - R distinctions.
Although they also studied children's acquisition of the A - R
distinction in social domains, their main focus has been on the age
at which children distinguish between the appearance and the
reality of physical objects. Their research paradigm is widely
accepted as the standard procedure for assessing children's knowledge about the A - R distinction. First, children are shown a deceptive object (e.g., a stone painted to look like an egg) and, while
unaware of the deception, are asked what it looks like. Then the
deceptive object's real properties are revealed to them. Next they
are asked the appearance question ("What does it look like? Does
it look like an egg or does it look like a stone?") and the reality
question ("What is it really really? Is it really really an egg or is it
really really a stone?"). Four- and 5-year-olds generally respond
correctly, that the object looks like an egg but is really a stone.
Most 3-year-olds, by contrast, fail to differentiate between the
object's appearance and reality. They either make a phenomenism
error (i.e., responding that the object looks like, and really is, an
egg) or an intellectual realism error (i.e., responding that it looks
like, and really is, a stone).
Three-year-olds continue to make these errors even when the
task is simplified (Flavell, Flavell, & Green, 1987; Flavell, Green,
& Flavell, 1986; Flavell, Green, Wahl, & Flavell, 1987) and when
they are trained on the A - R distinction (Flave11 et al., 1986; Taylor
& Hort, 1990). Cross-cultural comparisons with Mandarinspeaking children have found the same absolute level of performance, error patterns, and age trends (Flavell, Zhang, Zou, Dong,
& Qi, 1983). On the basis of these findings, Flavell (1988) con-
The distinction (that causes the most trouble in philosophy is the
distinction) between "appearance" and "reality," between what things
seem to be and what they are. The painter wants to know what things
seem to be, the practical man and the philosopher want to know what
they are.., but if reality is not what appears, have we any means of
knowing whether there is any reality at all?
----Bertrand Russell (1946, pp. 9, 16)
The distinction between appearance and reality (the A - R distinction) is a major issue of interest to both philosophers and
developmental psychologists. Philosophers (see Hacker, 1987) are
concerned with this distinction because of its relationship to the
fundamental philosophical questions of ontology (What is most
real?), metaphysics (What is the truth?), and epistemology (How is
knowledge obtained?). Developmental psychologists study children's understanding of the A - R distinction because this ability
serves critical functions in children's adaptation to their social and
physical environments. For example, understanding that a certain
food may appear to be appetizing but is in fact poisonous is critical
for survival (e.g., Siegal & Share, 1990). Understanding the distinction between what is said and what is meant facilitates chil-
Felicity Sapp, Kang Lee, and Darwin Muir, Department of Psychology,
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
This research was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council of Canada.
The data for the first three experiments were part of Felicity Sapp's
doctoral thesis, which was supervised by Kang Lee and Darwin Muir.
We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the children and their
parents and the teachers who participated in the experiments. Thanks also
go to Lawrence Symons and Ann Muir for their constructive comments on
an earlier version of the manuscript and to Joanne Doucette, Heather
Fritzley, and Anjanie McCarthy for collecting the data in Experiment 4.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kang
Lee, Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario,
Canada K7L 3N6. Electronic mall may be sent to kang@psyc.queensu.ca.
547
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SAPP, LEE, AND MUIR
cluded that 3-year-olds' "difficulties with the A - R distinction are
nontrivial, deep-seated, and genuinely intellectual ones" (p. 249).
He and his colleagues further suggested that this difficulty reflects
a deep-seated cognitive deficit in young children's ability to hold
dual representations of apparent and real properties (or apparent
and real identities) of an object. In their words, "many 3-year-olds
do not see clearly that even though something may actually be only
one thing or one way out there in the world at any given moment,
it can actually be more than one thing or one way up here in our
heads, in our mental representations of it" (Flavell, Green, &
Flavell, 1990, p. 3).
This conclusion has been challenged by evidence from non-A-R
tasks used by even Flavell and his associates. For example, 3-yearolds act as though they have dual representations of appearance
and reality in several contexts, including when they are engaged in
pretend play (Flavell et al., 1986; Flavell, Flavell, et al., 1987;
Woolley & Wellman, 1990), when they use scale models to find
hidden objects (DeLoache, 1991), when they distinguish pictures
or toys from real objects (DeLoache, 1991; Woolley & Wellman,
1990), and when they avoid food that looks good but is unsavory
(Siegal & Share, 1990). Siegal (1991) also identified several
procedural confounds that may contribute to the 3-year-olds' difficulty in answering A - R questions, including the use of doublebarrelled closed-ended questions (e.g., "What is it really and truly?
Is it really and truly A or is it really and truly B?"), a prolonged
testing period, and questions that violate conversational rules (e.g.,
repeated questioning). In addition, Siegal (1991) suggested that
young children's difficulty may stem from their inexperience with
the objects used in the typical A - R paradigm or from the manner
in which the A - R task is presented to them. Indeed, when Siegal
and Share (1990) used food items that appeared to be appetizing
but in fact were contaminated, 3-year-olds could make clear distinctions between the foods' appearance and reality. Finally, Rice,
Koinis, Sullivan, Tager-Flusberg, and Winner (1997) demonstrated that 3-year-olds' performance in a modified A - R task
improved when the use of the deceptive object was socially motivated (i.e., used to deceive another person) or when the
information-processing load was reduced.
These new findings, however, do not contradict Flavell's (1988)
conclusions fundamentally because they were obtained from studies that either substantially altered Flavell's typical A - R task
structure or used familiar objects. For example, Rice et al. (1997)
asked children in a trick condition to answer (a) a reality question
regarding their own understanding of a deceptive object and (b) an
appearance question concerning how the object would be perceived by a to-be-tricked individual. This task, rather than testing
children's dual representation of a deceptive object's appearance
and reality, appears to assess children's perspective-taking abilities. Although the typical A - R task structure is not altered in some
other studies, the objects used are always something that children
are very familiar with (e.g., toys, pictures, food items). When the
typical A - R task structure was maintained and an unfamiliar
deceptive object was used, all of the investigators cited previously
still found that 3-year-olds performed significantly worse than
older children in responding to A - R questions.
Evidence to date overwhelmingly supports Flavell's (1988) conclusion that 3-year-olds have difficulty in holding a dual representation of a deceptive object's apparent and real properties (or
apparent and real identities). Siegal (1991) conceded that outside
of familiar areas, children' s A - R understanding may be as limited
as suggested by Flavell (1988). Woolley and Wellman (1990)
suggested that distinguishing between the appearance and the
reality of unfamiliar, deceptive objects may be the last phase of
development in children's acquisition of A - R understanding. This
understanding may be beyond the level of 3-year-olds' cognitive
development. In other words, 3-year-olds' difficulties with the
A - R distinction of deceptive objects may indeed be "deep-seated,
genuinely intellectual ones" (Flavell, 1988, p. 249).
Before accepting this conclusion, we must rule out another
important possibility that has been overlooked in the literature. Our
review of the A - R literature indicates that all of the A - R studies
used children's verbal responses to obtain information about their
A - R understanding except one study by Flavell, Green, Wahl, and
Flavell (1987), who substituted pointing for the verbal response.
Possibly, 3-year-olds' poor performance on typical A - R tasks may
be an artifact of the verbal response paradigm commonly used to
assess their understanding of A - R distinctions. Three-year-firs
may not have a cognitive deficit for holding a dual representation
of a deceptive object's appearance and reality, as suggested by
Flavell (1988). Rather, they may indeed have an appropriate understanding of the A - R distinction but fail to demonstrate this
understanding because of their difficulty in verbalizing the
distinction.
To test this possibility, in four experiments we presented 3-yearolds with both nonverbal and verbal response tasks. In the nonverbal response paradigm, the children were asked to respond
nonverbally to two different requests: One was based on a deceptive object's apparent property, and the other was based on its real
property. The verbal response paradigm was a simplified version
of Flavell's A - R tasks that was used by Woolley and Wellman
(1990). The nonverbal response paradigm was designed to be as
equivalent as possible to the verbal response paradigm in order to
ensure that differences in performance could be attributed to the
difference in the mode in which the children gave their responses.
Hence, in both verbal and nonverbal response paradigms, the
experimenter always used verbal means either to ask questions (in
the verbal response paradigm) or to make a request (in the nonverbal response paradigm). The difference between the paradigms
lay in the manner in which the children gave their responses.
As shown in Table 1, Phases 1 and 2 were the same in both
paradigms. The children were presented with the deceptive object
before its real nature was revealed. For example, they were presented with a rock-sponge that looked like a rock but in reality was
a sponge (all deceptive objects to be discussed henceforth are
referred to first by their appearance and then by their reality). Then
the children were exposed to the rock-sponge's true nature as they
Table 1
Comparison of Flavell et al. 's (1986) Verbal Response
Paradigm and the Nonverbal Response Paradigm
Used in the Present Study
Phase
Verbal response paradigm
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Show deceptive object
Reveal true nature
Ask appearance and
reality questions
Nonverbal response paradigm
Show deceptive object
Reveal true nature
Requests re apparent and
real properties
APPEARANCE-REALITY DISTINCTION
t o u c h e d it. P h a s e 3 differed b e t w e e n the two p a r a d i g m s . In the
verbal r e s p o n s e p a r a d i g m , the children were a s k e d an a p p e a r a n c e
q u e s t i o n ( " W h a t does it look like?") a n d a reality q u e s t i o n ( " W h a t
is it really?"). In the n o n v e r b a l r e s p o n s e p a r a d i g m , the children
were a s k e d to r e s p o n d n o n v e r b a l l y to an a p p e a r a n c e r e q u e s t (e.g.,
they were a s k e d to give the e x p e r i m e n t e r an object so that s h e
c o u l d take a picture o f a teddy bear with " s o m e t h i n g that looks like
a rock"). T h e children also were a s k e d to r e s p o n d to a reality
r e q u e s t (e.g., t h e y were a s k e d to give the e x p e r i m e n t e r an object so
that s h e c o u l d wipe up s o m e spilled water). W e predicted that no
differences w o u l d be f o u n d b e t w e e n 3-year-olds' p e r f o r m a n c e in
the verbal a n d n o n v e r b a l r e s p o n s e p a r a d i g m s if F l a v e l l ' s (1988)
cognitive deficit h y p o t h e s i s is correct. Alternatively, if 3-yearolds' poor p e r f o r m a n c e on typical A - R tasks is a result o f their
difficulties in verbalizing the A - R distinction, then they should
p e r f o r m significantly better in the n o n v e r b a l t h a n in the verbal
response paradigm.
Experiment
1
Method
Participants
Fifteen children (7 boys and 8 girls, mean age = 3.5 years, range = 3.03.8 years) participated in one task that used a crayon-candle as the
deceptive object. Fifteen different children (10 boys and 5 girls, mean
age = 3.3 years, range = 3.0-3.8 years) participated in a second task in
which a rock-sponge was used as the deceptive object.
Materials
Props. Props used included a camera, a stuffed teddy bear, a Bart
Simpson doll, a plastic birthday cake and knife, a page from a coloring
book, and a plastic bowl with some water in it.
Nondeceptive objects. Two sets of noncritical, nondeceptive objects
were used, one set used in the pretest session and the other in the test
session. They included two baby training cups (one with a green lid and the
other with a purple lid), two apples (one red and one green), two small
rubber balls (one blue and one green), and two paper tissues (one beige and
one white). Four critical nondeceptive objects were also used in the pretest
session. They included a red crayon, a white birthday candle, a granite
rock, and a yellow sponge.
Deceptive objects. These consisted of one crayon-candle (a blue birthday candle wrapped in a blue Crayola crayon wrapper so that it looked like
a crayon but in reality was a birthday candle) and one rock-sponge (a dark
grey, irregularly shaped sponge that looked like a piece of granite).
Procedure
The children were tested individually by the same female experimenter.
Prior to testing, she spent approximately 5 to 10 rain becoming familiar
with each child. All of the children participated in a pretest followed by the
nonverbal response paradigm and then the verbal response paradigm. Half
of the children participated in the experiment with the crayon-candle as the
deceptive object, and the other half participated in the experiment with the
rock-sponge.
Step 1: Pretest. The children were tested to ensure that they understood
the function of a camera because the testing session involved the experimenter using a camera to take pictures. The children were also tested for
their ability to identify the functions of the six nondeceptive objects,
including the two critical nondeceptive objects. For the children in the
crayon-candle group, a real crayon and a real birthday candle were the
549
critical objects; for the children in the rock-sponge group, the critical
Objects were a real rock and a real sponge.
Next the experimenter demonstrated, and highlighted, a particular property for each of the four noncritical and the two critical nondeceptive
objects. For the crayon-candle group, the real crayon was used to color a
picture located beside the child. To demonstrate the real birthday candle's
property, the experimenter placed the candle on the cake and sang "Happy
Birthday to You." For the rock-sponge group, the property highlighted by
the experimenter for the real rock was demonstrated by hitting the floor
with it ("bang, bang, bang"). For the real sponge's property, the experimenter squished the sponge and wiped it on the floor. After the experimenter's property demonstrations, the children were asked to demonstrate
the objects' properties themselves. All of the children correctly labeled the
nondeceptive objects and demonstrated their properties as displayed by the
experimenter. The demonstration of a particular property by the experimenter was necessary because objects such as crayons, candles, rocks, and
sponges have multiple properties. The children could demonstrate any of
these properties to indicate that they understood what an object really was.
Sometimes their demonstrations were idiosyncratic and difficult to decipher. By limiting the children's attention to one particular property of an
object, we could reliably code the children's nonverbal responses as to
whether they knew what the object appeared to be and what it really was.
Step 2: Exposure to the deceptive object. This step, which is similar to
Phase 2 in Flavell et al.'s (1986) paradigm (see Table 1), was designed to
reveal the deceptive object's true nature to the children. Five new objects
were placed in front of the children. Four objects were of the same type as
those used ,in the pretest (e.g., a ball, an apple, a paper tissue, and a baby
cup); they differed only in color. The fifth object was the deceptive object
(the crayon-candle or rock-sponge). Again, the children were asked to
demonstrate the property of each object ("Show me what you can do with
this."). The deceptive object was randomly positioned in the row of objects,
but to avoid the possibility that its true nature would not be remembered
during subsequent testing, we manipulated it last.
In the crayon-candle group, all of the children correctly demonstrated
the properties of the four nondeceptive objects. For the deceptive crayoncandle, all of the children initially based their demonstration on the object's
apparent property and tried to color a picture with it, but they soon realized
that the "crayon" did not work. The experimenter revealed its true nature
to the children by showing the wick and pulling out the birthday candle
from under the crayon wrapper. The experimenter then demonstrated the
real property of the crayon-candle (i.e., by placing it on the birthday cake).
In the rock-sponge group, all of the children realized that the rock-sponge
was not a rock as soon as they touched it or picked it up. When the children
recognized the discrepancy, the experimenter demonstrated the real function of the rock-sponge by squishing it and wiping it on the floor (i.e., the
function previously associated with the real sponge).
Immediately after, to test whether the children now understood the real
nature of the deceptive objects, the experimenter asked them to demonstrate the deceptive objects' properties again. Only 4 children failed to
demonstrate the deceptive objects' true properties. Instead, they demonstrated the apparent properties of the crayon-candle (3 children) or the
rock-sponge (1 child). The experimenter repeated the procedure for these
children, who subsequently also correctly demonstrated the true properties
of the deceptive objects.
Step 3: Nonverbal response paradigm. After Step 2, the children
participated in Step 3, which was similar to Phase 3 in Flavell's (1988)
paradigm except that they did not have to give verbal responses. They were
asked to respond nonverbally to an appearance request and a reality
request. The order of the appearance and reality requests was counterbalanced between the children.
Appearance request: The same five objects were placed in front of the
children, including the deceptive object. The children were introduced to
the teddy bear and given a request about a nondeceptive object (randomly
chosen from the four nondeceptive objects). For example, the experimenter
550
SAPP, LEE, AND MUIR
asked, "I want to take a picture of Teddy with something that looks like a
ball. Can you help me?" The correct response was to give the ball to the
experimenter. Then the experimenter asked the children, "I want to take a
picture of Teddy with something that looks like a crayon [a rock]. Can you
help me?" The correct response was to choose the crayon-candle [rocksponge] out of the five objects in front of them and give it to the
experimenter.
Reality request: The children were introduced to a doll named Bast and
asked to help Bart, who needed various objects. The first question involved
a nondeceptive object (randomly chosen from the four nondeceptive objects). For example, the experimenter asked, "I need an apple for Bart to
eat. Can you help me?" The correct response was to give the experimenter
the apple. Next, in the crayon-candle group, the children were asked, "I
want a candle to put on Bart's birthday cake. Can you help me?" In the
rock-sponge group, the children saw the experimenter spill water on the
table and were asked, "I want a sponge to wipe up some spilled water. Can
you help me?" The correct responses were to select, respectively, the
crayon-candle or the rock-sponge from the five objects in front of them
and give it to the experimenter.
Step 4: Verbal responseparadigm. Last, all of the children participated
in a verbal response paradigm that was almost identical to Phase 3 in
Flavell et al.'s (1986) paradigm except that a simplified version of the
questions (Woolley & Wellman, 1990) was used. The experimenter
pointed to the deceptive object and asked an appearance question--"What
does this look like?"--and a reality question--"What is it really?" The
order of the two questions was counterbalanced between children. The
same questions were asked regarding one of the nondecepfive objects
(randomly chosen from the four nondeceptive objects).
Results
Nonverbal Response Paradigm
The children's nonverbal responses were coded as to whether
the children responded correctly to both the reality and appearance
requests regarding the deceptive objects (see Figure 1) as well as
the nondeceptive objects. For this and all subsequent analyses,
children were categorized as having passed the nonverbal response
task if they responded correctly to both reality and appearance
requests; they were categorized as having failed the task if they
responded incorrectly to at least one request. Chi-square analyses
were performed to examine whether the number of children who
passed the task was significantly greater than the number of
children who failed it. In the crayon-candle group, there were
significantly more children who gave correct responses to both
appearance and reality requests than children who failed both
requests or one of them, X2(1, N = 15) = 11.27, p < .01. Only 1
child made an error. All children correctly responded to both
requests for the nondeceptive objects. In the rock-sponge group,
all of the children correctly responded to both the appearance and
reality requests for the deceptive object and the nondeceptive
object (see Figure 2a). The children's responses to the appearance
and reality requests for the deceptive objects were also coded
according to Flavell et al.'s (1986) categories: correct responses to
both requests, phenomenism errors, intellectual realism errors, and
incorrect responses to both requests. Only 1 child in the crayoncandle group made an intellectual realism error, basing both responses on the crayon-candle's real property.
Verbal Response Paradigm
The children's verbal responses to the appearance and reality
questions conceming the crayon-candle, rock-sponge, and nondeceptive objects were coded as to whether both questions were
answered correctly (see Figure I). Chi-square analyses were performed to examine whether the number of children who passed the
task was significantly greater than the number of children who
failed it. In the crayon-candle group, only 6 out of 14 children
gave correct responses to both the appearance and reality questions, )(2(1, N = 14) = 0.29, ns (I child was excluded because
when he was asked the appearance question he responded "sign,"
Figure 1. Percentages of the children in Experiments 1, 2, and 3 who responded correctly in the verbal and
nonverbal response paradigms.
APPEARANCE-REALITY DISTINCTION
551
Figure 2. Percentages of the children in Experiments 1, 2, and 3 whose responses to both the appearance and
reality requests or questions fell into Flavell et al.'s (1986) four categories (both correct, phenomenism error,
intellectual realism error, and both incorrect) in the nonverbal (a) and verbal (b) response paradigms.
a response difficult for the experimenter to code). When the
questions involved nondeceptive objects, all of the children gave
correct responses to both questions. In the rock-sponge group, half
of the children responded correctly to both questions, whereas the
other half gave incorrect responses, Xz(1, N = 14) = 0.0, ns (1
child was excluded because he refused to answer both questions).
When questions concerned nondeceptive objects, 13 children responded correctly and I child responded that the ball looked like
a ball but was really a candy, X2(1, N = 14) = 10.29, p < .01 (1
child was excluded because he refused to answer the reality
question concerning one of the nondeceptive objects).
The children's verbal responses to the appearance and reality
questions concerning the deceptive objects were further divided
into Flavell et al.'s (1986) four categories (see Figure 2b). In the
crayon-candle group, 5 children made intellectual realism errors
and 3 gave incorrect responses to both questions. No child made
phenomenism errors. In the rock-sponge group, 2 children made
phenomenism errors, 2 made intellectual realism errors, and 3 gave
incorrect responses to both questions.
Discussion
The present experiment used both verbal and nonverbal response paradigms to investigate 3-year-olds' understanding of the
A - R distinction. In the nonverbal response paradigm, all but 1
child gave the experimenter the crayon-candle in response to her
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SAPP, LEE, AND MUIR
request to take a picture of something that looked like a crayon. All
of the children gave her the rock-sponge when she wanted to take
a picture of something that looked like a rock. These findings
suggest that the children had a correct representation of the apparent properties of the deceptive objects. In response to the reality
request, all of the children gave the experimenter the crayoncandle when asked to help the experimenter decorate a birthday
cake, and the rock-sponge when asked to help wipe up some
spilled water. These results indicate that the children were also
representing the real properties of the deceptive objects. This
finding is consistent with that found by Gauvain and Greene
(1994). In their study, preschool children were asked to show the
real function of a deceptive object (e.g., a rock-sponge), and the
majority of 3-year-olds gave correct reality responses. However,
Gauvain and Greene did not ask children to demonstrate the
apparent function of the deceptive objects, and hence it was not
known from their results whether their children represented both
the real and apparent properties of the deceptive object. It should
be noted that our children's use of the same object to respond to
both appearance and reality requests suggests that they have dual
representations of the object's two conflicting properties. Choosing the same object for the two different requests is particularly
impressive in light of young children's tendencies to switch responses when asked the same question repeatedly (Siegal & Peterson, 1994).
By contrast, in the verbal response paradigm, for the two deceptive objects combined, half of the same children responded
incorrectly to the A - R questions. The pattern of error (intellectual
realism errors, phenomenism errors, and both incorrect responses)
was similar to those found in previous studies that used "identity"
A - R tasks (i.e., tasks requiring children to label the apparent and
real identities of a deceptive object as opposed to its apparent and
real properties). Typically, Flavell and his associates found that
fewer than half of 3-year-olds answered both the appearance and
reality questions correctly in identity tasks (Flavell, Flavell, et al.,
1983; Flavell et al., 1986).
It could be argued that the children in the nonverbal response
paradigm were simply engaging in pretend play. They might
represent only one of a deceptive object's conflicting properties.
While appropriately choosing the deceptive object in response to
the request involving this property, they might pretend that the
same object has a different property when responding to another
request. If one takes the rock-sponge as an example, if the children
represented the deceptive object only as a "rock," then they should
respond appropriately to the appearance request (i.e., "something
that looks like a rock"). When asked to respond to the reality
request (i.e., "a sponge to wipe spilled water"), they might pretend
that the "rock" was a sponge. This argument seems unlikely. If the
children pretended that the "rock" was a sponge, there would be no
reason for them not to pretend that such objects as a paper tissue,
an apple, a ball, and a cup were sponges. The pretense explanation
would predict that the children would choose one of the nondeceptive objects at least 80% of the time in response to the reality
request. In fact, the children should be more likely to pretend that
the paper tissue rather than the "rock" was a sponge because the
paper tissue really can be used to wipe up spills! Moreover, if the
children were engaging in pretend play in the nonverbal response
paradigm, why did they not pretend in the verbal response paradigm as well? If they did, to continue the above example, the
children could have reported that the deceptive object looked like
a rock and then pretended that it was a sponge, thus giving both
correct answers.
In sum, the findings of the present experiment do not support the
cognitive deficit hypothesis. In the verbal response paradigm, the
children's difficulties with the A - R tasks may not have been due
to their inability to hold dual representations of a deceptive object.
Rather, their problem within these tasks may have been a result of
our use of verbal responses to assess their A - R understanding.
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 was designed to replicate the findings of Experiment 1 with a simplified procedure. Experiment 1 revealed that
the children's spontaneous, nonverbal demonstrations of the properties of experimental objects were not as diverse as previously
thought. Their tendency to give a common nonverbal response for
a specific object rendered the experimenter's property demonstration of the various objects unnecessary. Removing the property
demonstration from the original procedure reduced the amount of
prompting given by the experimenter and controlled for the possibility that the children might simply have imitated the experimenter's behavior associated with the deceptive object without
truly understanding its real and apparent properties.
Me~od
Participants
Ten children (8 boys and 2 girls, mean age = 3.5 years, range = 3.3-3.9
years) participated in the crayon-candle group. Ten different children (6
boys and 4 girls, mean age = 3.1 years, range = 2.9-3.7 years) participated in the rock-sponge group.
Materials
The same props as in Experiment 1 plus a package of matches, a small
compact mirror, and Windex cleaner were used. The same nondeceptive
objects (including the critical ones) as in Experiment 1 were used except
that the paper tissues were replaced with two different children's books
because of a procedural modification (see below). The deceptive objects
were again the crayon-candle and the rock-sponge.
Procedure
Step 1: Pretest. The children were tested on their knowledge of a
camera as well as their knowledge of the identities and properties of the
nondeceptive objects. However, the experimenter did not give a demonstration of each object property as was done in Experiment 1. Instead, the
children were given each nondeceptive object to manipulate and were
asked to identify it. All of the children labeled the objects correctly. To test
the children's understanding of each object's property, we asked them to
"show me what you can use this for." For the real crayon, the children
could use a page from a coloring book located beside them. For the
birthday candle, the children had to demonstrate understanding that it could
be lit, could be used with cakes, or was for birthday activities. For the
sponge, the children had to demonstrate the understanding of its use in
washing or wiping things. For the rock, the children had to demonstrate
understanding that it was hard and heavy (e.g., by banging it on the table).
No child had any difficulty in demonstrating the properties of these objects.
Step 2: Exposure to the deceptive object. The procedure was the same
as that used in Experiment 1.
APPEARANCE-REALITY DISTINCTION
Step 3: Nonverbal responseparadigm. The order in which the children
received the appearance and reality requests was counterbalanced between
the children. Each child received two requests, one involving the deceptive
object and the other concerning a nondeceptive object (randomly chosen
from the four nondeceptive objects). This procedure was different from that
in Experiment 1, in which the requests for the deceptive object were always
made after those for the nondeceptive object. In the present experiment,
half of the children received the request for the nondeceptive object first,
and the other half received the request for the deceptive object first.
Appearance request: The procedure for this part was identical to that
used in Experiment 1.
Reality request: The procedure for this part was similar to that in
Experiment 1 except the wording of the requests was different. The
experimenter did not directly label the object needed. Instead, the children
had to infer which of the five objects was appropriate from the activity
involved in the request. The test question for the children in the crayoncandle group involved the experimenter lighting a match and asking, "I
need something to light and put on the birthday cake. Can you help me?"
The correct response was to give the experimenter the crayon-candle. For
the children in the rock-sponge group, the experimenter asked them to pass
her "something" so that she could wipe Windex cleaner off a hand mirror.
To avoid ambiguity, we replaced the paper tissue used in Experiment 1
with a children's book because a paper tissue could also have been used to
wipe up Windex cleaner.
Step 4: Verbal responseparadigm. The same children also participated
in a verbal response paradigm, which was identical to the one in
Experiment I.
Resul~
Nonverbal Response Paradigm
The children's nonverbal responses were coded as to whether
the children responded correctly to both the reality and appearance
requests regarding the deceptive objects (see Figure 1) as well as
the nondeceptive objects. Nine out of 10 children in the crayoncandle group correctly responded to both the appearance and
reality requests regarding the crayon-candle, )(2(1, N =
10) = 6.40, p < .05. Nine of the same 10 children correctly
responded to both requests regarding the nondeceptive object,
X2(1, N = 10) = 6.40, p < .05. All of the children in the
rock-sponge group correctly responded to both the appearance and
reality requests regarding the rock-sponge; 9 of the same 10
children correctly responded to the reality request for the nondeceptive object, Xz(1, N = 10) = 6.40, p < .05. The children's
responses to the appearance and reality requests were also divided
according to Flavell et al.'s (1986) categories. Figure 2a shows
that 1 child made a phenomenism error and another child made an
intellectual realism error.
Verbal Response Paradigm
The children's verbal responses were coded as to whether the
children responded correctly to both the reality and appearance
questions regarding the crayon-candle, the rock-sponge, and the
nondeceptive objects. All of the children responded correctly to
both questions involving the nondeceptive objects. For the deceptive objects, as shown in Figure l, for the crayon-candle group, 3
out of l0 children answered both questions correctly, X2(1, N =
10) -- 1.60, ns, and for the rock-sponge group, 6 out of 10 children
correctly responded to both questions, )(2(1, N = 10) = 0.40, ns.
553
The children's verbal responses were divided into Flavell et al.'s
(1986) four categories. Figure 2b shows that for the crayon- candle
group, 1 child made a phenomenism error and another child made
an intellectual realism error. Five children gave incorrect answers
to both questions. For the rock-sponge group, 2 children made
phenomenism errors, 1 made intellectual realism errors, and 1 gave
incorrect responses to both questions.
Discussion
Experiment 2 replicated and extended the results of Experiment 1. Ninety percent of 3-year-olds gave appropriate responses
to requests based on the deceptive objects' conflicting properties
but were less successful when asked to describe, verbally, the
appearance and reality of the same deceptive objects. All but 1
child selected the deceptive object when asked to help the experimenter take a picture of something that looked like a crayon or a
rock, which suggests that the children represented the deceptive
objects' apparent property. Similarly, for the request that involved
the real property of the deceptive objects, all of the children
except l gave correct responses. They passed the experimenter the
crayon-candle when asked for something to light and put on the
cake, and the rock-sponge when asked for something to help wipe
the mirror. These responses suggest that the children also correctly
represented the deceptive objects' real properties. The children's
responses to the two requests made it clear that they were able to
represent the two conflicting properties of the deceptive objects.
In the verbal response paradigm, when the children were asked
questions concerning the appearance and the reality of the deceptive objects, they performed poorly. For both deceptive objects
combined, fewer than half of the children (9 out of 20) gave correct
responses to the appearance and reality questions. The children's
error patterns were similar to the results of Experiment 1 and
Flavell's findings (e.g., Flavell, Flavell, et al., 1983).
In sum, Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1
when the nonverbal response procedure was simplified by eliminating experimenter prompting. Almost all 3-year-olds responded
correctly, nonverbally, to two different requests regarding deceptive objects' conflicting properties. In contrast, they had difficulty
responding verbally to questions concerning the deceptive objects'
appearance and reality. The findings of Experiment 2 reinforce the
argument that 3-year-olds do not have a cognitive deficit, that is,
an inability to hold dual representations of the conflicting properties of a deceptive object.
Experiment 3
In Experiment 3 we examined whether the findings of Experiments 1 and 2 could be generalized to a different type of deceptive
object. In this experiment, we used a deceptive cup that looked full
of water but was really empty. This type of deceptive object was
often used in Flavell's "property" A - R tasks (Flavell, Flavell, et
al., 1983), whereas the rock-sponge and crayon-candle used in
Experiments 1 and 2 were similar to objects used in Flavell's
"identity" A - R tasks. The difference between the two types of
objects lies in the fact that the "identity" deceptive objects have
conflicting properties associated with different identities (e.g., the
rock-sponge's visual property is associated with a rock, whereas
its tactile property is associated with a sponge). In contrast, the
554
SAPP, LEE, AND MUIR
"property" deceptive objects h a v e conflicting properties, but both
are associated with the s a m e identity (e.g., the full or e m p t y
properties o f a cup). Children h a v e b e e n f o u n d (e.g., Taylor &
Flavell, 1984) to m a k e m o r e intellectual r e a l i s m errors in an
identity A - R task a n d m o r e p h e n o m e n i s m errors in a property
A - R task.
Method
Participants
Ten 3-year-olds (8 boys and 2 girls, mean age = 3.17 years,
range = 2.92-3.92 years) participated.
Materials
A camera, a stuffed teddy bear, four plastic glasses, a plastic glass with
a live plant in it, a large container, and a bottle of Everfresh juice were used
as props. The nondeceptive objects were the same two baby cups (one full
of water and one empty) used in Experiments 1 and 2; the deceptive object
was a baby cup that looked full of water but in reality was empty.
Procedure
Step 1: Pretest. The children were first tested for their understanding
of a camera. Then, to ensure that they understood the termsfull and empty
as used in the experiment, we presented them with two sets of plastic
glasses, one empty and the other full of water. For each set, the children
were asked to indicate which glass was empty and which was full. None of
the children had any difficulty with the terms.
Next we tested the children's understanding of the transformation that
occurs when water is poured from a full container into an empty container
because these actions were to be performed during the following testing
session. For this purpose, the children were presented with a full baby cup
and an empty baby cup and were asked whether each cup looked full or
empty. Then the cups' tops were taken off, and the children felt inside.
Next the experimenter poured the water out of the full baby cup and filled
the empty baby cup. The children again felt inside the cups and were asked
whether the cups looked full or empty. All of the children responded
correctly to the questions.
Step 2: Exposure to the deceptive object. A deceptive cup with a lid on
it so that it looked full of water but was really empty was presented to the
children. They were asked whether the deceptive cup looked full or empty.
To remain in the experiment, the children had to report that the deceptive
cup looked full. Otherwise, the possibility that they were familiar with this
type of cup and hence did not find it deceptive could not be ruled out. One
child was dropped from the original sample because she reported that the
deceptive cup looked empty. This child informed the experimenter that she
had a cup like this at home. Then the experimenter revealed the real nature
of the deceptive cup (its emptiness) to the children by encouraging them to
feel inside it.
Step 3: Nonverbal response paradigm. Three baby cups (one full
nondeceptive cup, one empty nondeceptive cup, and one deceptive cup that
appeared to be full but was really empty) were placed in front of the
children. One at a time, the cups' tops were removed, and the children felt
inside each cup. This procedure ensured that the children were aware of the
emptiness or fullness oftbe three baby cups. The critical deceptive cup was
randomly positioned, but we always had the children feel inside it
last to avoid the possibility of memory loss. The order in which the
children received the following appearance and reality requests was
counterbalanced.
Appearance request: The nondeceptive full cup was taken away and the
deceptive cup and the nondeceptive empty cup remained in front of the
children. First the children were asked to help the experimenter take a
picture of a teddy bear with a cup that looked full. The correct response was
to give the experimenter the deceptive cup that looked full but was really
empty. After the child made a response, the cup selected by the child was
returned to the row of cups. A second requeSt was then made that involved
the nondeceptive cup's visual appearance (e.g., "I want to take a picture of
Teddy with a cup that looks empty"). The correct response was to give the
experimenter the nondeceptive cup. After the children responded to these
requests, the experimenter filled the empty nondeceptive cup with water
from a container so that it would be full for the reality request that
followed.
Reality request: The nondeceptive full cup and the deceptive cup were
placed in front of the children. First the experimenter indicated that she
wanted a drink and asked the children to pass her a cup in which she could
pour juice. This request concerned the real property of the deceptive cup
(e.g., its being empty). After the children made a correct response, juice
was poured into the deceptive cup. For hygienic reasons, the experimenter
did not drink the juice. The cup was rinsed out in front of the children and
cleaned so that it remained empty. The cup was then returned to the row of
cups. A second request was made, which involved the nondeceptive cup's
real property. A plant in a plastic glass was presented to the children, and
they were allowed to touch it to ensure that they knew it was real. To
ensure that they knew that plants need water to grow, the experimenter
asked the children what plants drink. Then the experimenter asked the
children to pass her a cup so that she could water the plant. If the child gave
the correct response, the water in the nondeceptive cup was poured into the
glass with the plant and the cup was emptied.
Step 4: Verbal response paradigm. All of the children participated in
a verbal response paradigm similar to the one used in Experiments 1 and 2.
First the experimenter poured water into the nondeceptive empty cup and
placed it along with the deceptive cup in front of the children. Then, for
half of the children, the experimenter pointed to the deceptive cup and
asked an appearance question--"Does this baby cup look full or does it
look empty?"--and a reality question--"Is this baby cup really full or is it
really empty?" The same questions were then asked about the nondeceptive
cup. For the other half of the children, the order was reversed. Also, the
order in which the two questions were asked was counterbalanced between
children.
Results
Nonverbal Response Paradigm
T h e c h i l d r e n ' s n o n v e r b a l r e s p o n s e s were c o d e d as to w h e t h e r
the children r e s p o n d e d correctly to both the appearance a n d reality
requests (see Figure 1). All o f the children g a v e correct r e s p o n s e s
to both requests i n v o l v i n g the deceptive cup. For the requests
c o n c e r n i n g the n o n d e c e p t i v e cups, 9 out o f 10 children gave
correct r e s p o n s e s to both requests, X2(1, N = 10) = 6.40, p < .05.
Verbal Response Paradigm
T h e c h i l d r e n ' s verbal r e s p o n s e s to the A - R q u e s t i o n s were
c o d e d as to w h e t h e r the children r e s p o n d e d to both appearance a n d
reality q u e s t i o n s correctly. O n l y 1 o u t o f 10 children g a v e correct
r e s p o n s e s to both questions, )(2(1, N = 10) = 6.40, p < .05. All o f
the s a m e children r e s p o n d e d correctly to the A - R q u e s t i o n s regarding the n o n d e c e p t i v e cup. T h e c h i l d r e n ' s r e s p o n s e s to the A - R
q u e s t i o n s regarding the deceptive c u p were divided into Flavell et
al.'s (1986) four categories. A s c a n be seen in Figure 2b, 6 children
m a d e p h e n o m e n i s m errors a n d 3 m a d e intellectual r e a l i s m errors.
N o n e m a d e " b o t h incorrect" errors.
APPEARANCE--REALITY DISTINCTION
Discussion
Consistent with the findings of Experiments 1 and 2, all 3-yearolds in Experiment 3 gave correct nonverbal responses to different
requests involving the deceptive cup's conflicting apparent and
real properties. For the appearance request concerning the deceptive cup's apparent property (i.e., it looked full), all of the children
responded correctly. They all chose the deceptive cup instead of
the nondeceptive empty cup when the experimenter wanted to take
a picture of a cup that looked full. This result suggests that the
children represented the deceptive cup's apparent property. For the
request involving the real property of the deceptive cup, all of the
children gave correct responses. They all chose the deceptive cup
rather than the nondeceptive full cup when the experimenter
wanted a cup to pour juice into, which suggests that they also
represented its real property (i.e., emptiness).
By contrast, the same children did not perform well in the verbal
response paradigm. All of the children except 1 failed to apply
different labels to the deceptive cup's apparent and real properties.
Six of the 10 children made phenomenism errors, responding that
the deceptive cup looked full and really was full. Three children
made intellectual realism errors, responding that it looked empty
and really was empty. These results are strikingly comparable to
previous findings that approximately 60% of 3-year-olds tend to
make phenomenism errors in a property A - R task (Flavell, Flavell,
et al., 1983; Flavell et al., 1986; Flavell, Zhang, et al., 1983; Taylor
& Flavell, 1984).
Experiment 4
We conducted Experiment 4 to address an aspect of the design
used in Experiments 1 and 2 that might limit the conclusions we
can draw from the results of these experiments. Our children might
have succeeded in the nonverbal response paradigm even though
they were unable to hold a dual representation of the deceptive
object's apparent and real properties. In both experiments, the
children were not given alternative objects with which they could
reasonably choose to respond to the experimenter's appearance
and reality requests. For both requests, in addition to the deceptive
object, the children were presented only with a baby training cup,
an apple, a rubber ball, and a paper tissue (or a children's book) as
alternatives. Because most of these alternatives were so different
from what was requested, the children might have chosen the
deceptive object not because they had a dual representation of the
deceptive object but because it shared some similarities with the
requested object.
For example, in the reality request part of the rock-sponge task,
when asked to give the experimenter something with which to
wipe spilled water (the reality request), phenomenist children (i.e.,
those who thought the rock-sponge looked like and really was a
rock) might have chosen the rock-sponge for wiping not because
they thought it was a sponge but because it was one of the
alternatives that was most similar to a sponge (e.g., the rocksponge's soft tactile quality). In the reality request part of the
crayon-candle task, when asked to give the experimenter something to put on the cake, phenomenist children (i.e., those who
thought the crayon-candle looked like and was a crayon) might
have chosen it as a candle not because they thought it really was
a candle but because it was more similar to a candle than any of the
other alternatives (e.g., both crayon and candle were elongated).
555
The same argument can be made about the appearance request.
In the rock-sponge task, when asked to provide an object that
looked like a rock, realist children (i.e., those who thought the
rock-sponge looked like and really was a sponge) might have
chosen the rock-sponge as their response because that alternative
was most similar to a rock on certain dimensions (e.g., the rocksponge's rugged surface). They might not have thought that the
rock-sponge actually resembled a rock at all. In the crayon-candle
task, realist children (i.e., those who thought the crayon-candle
looked like and really was a candle) might have given the experimenter the crayon-candle in response to the appearance request
not because they thought the crayon-candle actually looked like a
crayon but because it was the only alternative that shared common
attributes with the crayon (e.g., both crayon and candle had an
elongated shape). Despite the fact that most 3-year-olds appeared
to respond correctly to both the appearance and reality requests in
Experiments 1 and 2, they might not have made these responses on
the basis of their understanding of the A - R distinction. Their
success in the nonverbal response paradigm of Experiments 1
and 2 might not have reflected their ability to hold a dual representation of the real and apparent properties of a deceptive object.
To address this issue, in Experiment 4 we modified the procedure used in Experiments l and 2 by adding a number of new items
as alternative choices. Among them were a dark brown brick, a
pair of blue and white cotton socks, one pink wool glove, a short
bamboo stick, a pencil stub (the same length as the crayoncandle), and a piece of paper. These items were chosen because of
their similarity to the requested target objects in terms of their
appearance (e.g., looking like a rock or a crayon) or potential
function (e.g., being used to wipe up dirt or being able to be lit with
fire). For example, the brick was similar to a rock by being heavy
and having a rugged surface. Pilot testing showed that some young
children even called it a rock. It could be chosen by the children in
response to the appearance request in the rock-sponge task. The
socks and the glove were soft, appeared to be absorbent, and could
be used to wipe up dirt. The pencil and the bamboo stick were
elongated like the crayon, and the pencil, like the crayon, obviously could be used to draw pictures. The bamboo stick and the
paper could potentially be lit with fire.
Another procedural modification was the inclusion of a real
rock, sponge, crayon, and candle as alternatives. The children were
given two identical appearance requests and two identical reality
requests. For example, in the appearance-request part of the task,
the experimenter requested two things "that look like a rock [or a
crayon]" to be included in a picture. In the reality-request part of
the task, the experimenter requested two things to "wipe off dirt"
[or to "be put on the cake and lit with a lighter"]. If the children
chose the appropriate, real object in response to the first of each of
these requests, it would indicate they clearly understood the meaning of the appearance and reality requests. At issue is what the
children would choose for the second request, when none of the
remaining objects would be perfect choices but several could be
used to satisfy the request. If the children continued to choose the
deceptive object as in previous experiments, then this would suggest that they truly held representations of its conflicting
properties.
A final procedural modification was made to address another
outstanding issue. In Experiments 1 through 3, the nonverbal
response tasks were always conducted prior to the verbal response
556
SAPP, LEE, AND MUIR
tasks, leaving open the question o f whether the children's participation in the nonverbal paradigm had any impact on their perform a n c e in the verbal paradigm and vice versa. In Experiment 4, the
order o f the two paradigms was counterbalanced b e t w e e n the
children.
task, the experimenter asked for two things that could be put on the cake
and lit with a lighter or match.
Step 4: Verbalresponseparadigm. The same children also participated
in a verbal response paradigm identical to the one in Experiment 1.
Results
Method
Participants
Twenty-two children participated (12 boys and 10 girls, mean age = 3.5
years, range = 3.0-3.9 years).
Materials
The props were the same as those used in Experiment 2 except that two
teddy bears and two toy cars were added. The nondeceptive objects
(including the critical ones) were the same as those used in Experiment 2
except that a brown brick, a pair of white and blue cotton socks, a pink
wool glove, a sharpened pencil stub (as long as a regular crayon), a bamboo
stick, and a piece of paper were added. The deceptive objects were the
crayon-candle and the rock-sponge. A lighter was also used.
Procedure
The children were tested individually. The child and the experimenter sat
on the floor, facing each other. Half of the children were tested by a female
experimenter, and the other half were tested by a male experimenter. Half
of the children were randomly assigned to receive the nonverbal response
task first and the verbal response task second (the nonverbal-first condition). The other half received the reverse order (the verbal-first condition).
All children participated in both the rock-sponge and crayon-candle tasks,
with the tasks counterbalanced between participants.
Step 1: Pretest. The procedure was the same as that used in Experiment 2. Also, the experimenter asked the children to name all nondeceptive
objects as well as to describe their functions. Two children's data for the
rock-sponge task were excluded because 1 called the yellow sponge
"cheese" and 1 failed to identify the brick and its function. Once the objects
were shown to the child, they were left on the floor, forming a semicircle
in front of the child.
Step 2: Exposure to the deceptive object. The procedure was the same
as that used in Experiment 2.
Step 3: Nonverbal responseparadigm. For both appearance and reality
requests, the children were encouraged to pick two objects, but they were
allowed to pick only one object if they so chose. Both the order in which
the children received the rock-sponge and the crayon-candle tasks and the
order in which they received the appearance and reality requests were
counterbalanced.
Appearance request: The procedure for this part was similar to that used
in Experiment 2. First the child was told that the experimenter wanted to
take a picture of the child holding something that "looks like a teddy bear
[or a toy car]." After the child picked up a teddy bear with one hand, the
experimenter indicated that she or he wanted the child to hold in the other
hand something that "also looks like a teddy bear [or a toy car]." A
photograph was then taken. Then the experimenter indicated that she or he
wanted to take a picture of the child holding something that "looks like a
rock [or a crayon]." After the child responded, the experimenter asked the
child to hold in the other hand something that "also looks like a rock [or a
crayon]." Another photograph was then taken.
Reality request: The procedure for this part was similar to that in
Experiment 2 except that the experimenter made two requests. In the
rock-sponge task, the experimenter asked the child to give him or her
something to wipe off the dirt on one of the experimenter's shoes and
something else to wipe off the dirt on the other shoe. In the crayon-candle
Nonverbal Response Paradigm
All o f the children chose the real rock or crayon for one o f the
appearance requests and the real sponge or candle for one o f the
reality requests in the r o c k - s p o n g e task. This finding suggests that
all o f the children understood what was asked o f them w h e n the
experimenter made the request.
For each task, the children's responses were coded as correct if
they chose the deceptive object as their first or second choice for
the reality request. The same was done for the appearance request.
On the basis o f their responses to the appearance and reality
requests, the children were categorized into the correct group if
they responded to both requests correctly or the incorrect group if
they responded incorrectly to at least one o f the requests.
Figure 3 shows the percentages o f the children w h o gave correct
responses to both the appearance and reality requests in the r o c k sponge and c r a y o n - c a n d l e tasks in the nonverbal-first condition
and the verbal-first condition. The children's responses to the
appearance and reality requests were also divided according to
Flavell et al.'s (1986) categories (see Table 2). In the nonverbalfirst condition, 11 out o f 12 children correctly responded to both
the appearance and reality requests regarding the crayon, the
candle, and the c r a y o n - c a n d l e , )(2(1, N = 12) = 8.3, p < .01. Nine
o f the same 10 children (2 were excluded as noted above) correctly
responded to both requests regarding the rock, the sponge, and the
r o c k - s p o n g e , XZ(1, N = 10) = 6.40, p < .05. In the verbal-first
condition, only 4 out o f 10 children gave correct responses in the
c r a y o n - c a n d l e task, and 5 out o f 10 gave correct responses in the
r o c k - s p o n g e task: X2(1, N = 10) = 0.4, ns, and )(2(1, N = 10) = 0,
ns, respectively. Chi-square analyses showed that the condition
effect was significant for the c r a y o n - c a n d l e task, )(2(1, N =
22) = 6.71, p < .05, and marginally significant for the r o c k sponge task, Xz(1, N = 22) = 3.81, p = .051. Thus, participating
in the verbal response paradigm first had a detrimental effect on
the children's performance in the nonverbal response paradigm.
N e x t we a n a l y z e d w h i c h o b j e c t s were s e l e c t e d for the first
and s e c o n d a p p e a r a n c e requests. In the c r a y o n - c a n d l e task,
r e g a r d l e s s o f order, for the first a p p e a r a n c e request, 82% o f the
children c h o s e the real c r a y o n w h e r e a s only 14% c h o s e the
c r a y o n - c a n d l e and 1 c h o s e the pencil. In the r o c k - s p o n g e task,
80% o f the children c h o s e the real rock and 20% c h o s e the
r o c k - s p o n g e . For the s e c o n d a p p e a r a n c e r e q u e s t in the c r a y o n candle task, 14% o f the c h i l d r e n c h o s e the real crayon, 64%
c h o s e the c r a y o n - c a n d l e , 2 c h o s e the pencil, and 2 c h o s e
nothing. In the r o c k - s p o n g e task, for the s e c o n d a p p e a r a n c e
request, 20% c h o s e the real rock, 60% the r o c k - s p o n g e , and
20% the brick. Clearly, the majority o f the children c h o s e the
real object for the first a p p e a r a n c e r e q u e s t and the d e c e p t i v e
object for the s e c o n d a p p e a r a n c e request.
W e also analyzed the children's responses to the reality requests. For the first request, all o f the children chose the real
candle in the c r a y o n - c a n d l e task, and 95% chose the real sponge
in the r o c k - s p o n g e task (1 child chose the rock-sponge). For the
APPEARANCE-REALITY DISTINCTION
557
Figure 3. Percentages of the children in Experiment 4 who responded correctly in the verbal and nonverbal
response paradigms under the nonverbal-first and verbal-first conditions.
second reality request in the crayon-candle task, 1 child chose the
real candle, 73% chose the crayon-candle, 2 chose the crayon,
and 3 chose nothing. In the rock-sponge task, for the second
request, 85% chose the rock-sponge, 1 chose the real rock, 1 chose
the brick, and 1 chose nothing. Again, most children chose the real
object for the first reality request and the deceptive object for the
second reality request.
ure 3). The children's responses were also divided according to
Flavell et al.'s (1986) categories (see Table 2). In the nonverbalfirst condition, 4 out of 12 children correctly responded to both the
appearance and reality questions regarding the crayon-candle,
)(2(1, N = 12) = 1.33, ns, and 5 out of 10 children correctly
responded to both questions regarding the rock-sponge, X2(1, N =
10) = 0, ns. In the verbal-first condition, 5 out of 10 children gave
correct responses in the crayon-candle task, and 5 out of 10 gave
correct responses in the rock-sponge task: both )(2(1, N = 10) = 0,
ns. Chi-square analyses showed that the order (condition) effect
was nonsignificant for both the crayon-candle and rock-sponge
task: x2(t, N = 22) = 0.63, ns, and X2(1, N = 20) = 0, ns,
Verbal Response Paradigm
The children's verbal responses were coded as to whether the
children responded correctly to both the reality and appearance
questions regarding the crayon-candle and rock-sponge (see Fig-
Table 2
Children's Responses to the Appearance and Reality Requests and Questions in Experiment 4
According to Flavell et al. 's (1986) Categories
Task and order
Nonverbal response paradigm
Crayon-candle task
Nonverbal first
Verbal first
Rock-sponge task
Nonverbal first
Verbal first
Verbal response paradigm
Crayon-candle task
Nonverbal first
Verbal first
Rock-sponge task
Nonverbal first
Verbal first
Both
correct
Phenomenism
error
Realism
error
Both
incorrect
N
11
4
0
2
0
1
1
3
12
10
9
5
1
1
0
4
0
0
10
10
4
5
2
1
3
2
3
2
12
10
5
5
4
1
1
3
0
1
10
10
558
SAPP, LEE, AND MUIR
respectively. Regardless of whether the children participated in the
verbal task first or second, their performances in the verbal response paradigm were similarly poor.
Discussion
The results from the nonverbal-first condition replicate and
extend the findings of Experiments 1 and 2. Many of the children
failed in the verbal paradigm, but most of the same children
correctly responded to the appearance and reality requests concerning the deceptive objects. The near-perfect performance in the
nonverbal paradigm was achieved even when the children were
presented with distracting alternatives that shared some functional
or perceptual properties with the requested objects. In addition, all
of the children were correct in choosing the real objects in response to one of the appearance or reality requests, which suggests
that they understood what the appearance and reality requests
required them to do.
For the rock-sponge task, it seems reasonable to conclude that
those children in the verbal-first condition correctly chose the
rock-sponge to respond to the appearance request ("something that
looks like a rock") because they thought the deceptive object
looked like a rock. It is inconceivable that those children chose the
deceptive object on the basis of properties other than the object's
visual likeness to a real rock. For example, if the children based
their choice on tactile properties, they could have chosen the brick,
which felt as hard and heavy as the real rock.
It is also reasonable to conclude that the children chose the
rock-sponge to respond to the reality request ("something to wipe
off dirt") based on the deceptive object's spongelike function. It is
certain that they did not choose the deceptive object on the basis of
its visual properties because the deceptive object did not resemble
a sponge in shape, size, or color. Also, it is unlikely that the
children chose it simply because of its tactile properties (e.g.,
softness, pliability). If that were the case, then they could have
chosen the glove or socks. It is interesting that they did not choose
the glove, socks, or paper to wipe off the dirt; these objects in fact
could have been used to achieve the desired results. This finding
suggests that the children did not choose just any object that had
the function of wiping but instead chose the object whose primary
function was wiping. One may argue, however, that the children
did so because they already chose the real sponge first and simply
generalized their response from the first to the second request. We
agree. In fact, the children's strong tendency to choose the rocksponge, rather than the glove, the sock, or the paper, for the second
reality request strengthens our contention that the children based
their choices on the rock-sponge's spongelike function.
With regard to the crayon-candle task, it is reasonable to
conclude that the children chose the crayon-candle to respond to
the reality request ("something that looks like a crayon") because
they thought the object looked like a crayon. It is unlikely that the
children thought the crayon-candle did not visually resemble a
crayon but chose it because of its shape, size, and weight (e.g.,
elongated, round, and small). If this were the case, the children
would have been equally likely to choose the pencil, because its
shape, size, and weight were similar to those of a real crayon. With
regard to the reality requests (putting something on a cake and
lighting it with a lighter), most children chose the real candle in
response to the first request and the deceptive object in response to
the second request. We suggest that they did so because of the
crayon-candle's candlelike property. Before the children placed
the crayon-candle on the cake, many attempted to pull the wick
out of the crayon wrapping, and some even tried to remove the
wrapping altogether. The children did not choose an object simply
because it could be lit with fire. If that were the case, they could
have chosen the bamboo stick or the paper. They also did not base
their choice on the object's resemblance in shape, color, and size
to a candle because they could have chosen the pencil or the
bamboo stick if that were the case.
Taken together, the results from the children's responses to the
appearance and reality requests in the nonverbal-first condition
suggest that most of the 3-year-olds really did understand that the
rock-sponge looked like a rock but actually possessed spongelike
properties whereas the crayon-candle looked like a crayon but really
had candlelike properties. In other words, they held a dual representation of the apparent and real properties of the deceptive objects.
At the same time, we discovered an important order effect. For
the verbal response paradigm, the 3-year-olds' performance remained the same regardless of whether the verbal task came before
or after the nonverbal task. By contrast, the children' s performance
was significantly poorer when the verbal task preceded the nonverbal one than when the verbal task came second. Prior verbal
experience with the appearance and reality questions seemed to
confuse the children. Those in the verbal-first condition were less
inclined to choose the deceptive object in response to the appearance and reality requests in the subsequent nonverbal response
task. Rather, some of them chose the brick to respond to the reality
request and the appearance request in the rock-sponge task. In the
crayon-candle task, they chose the pencil to respond to the reality
request as well as to the appearance request. Several children
refused to respond to the second request altogether. This order
effect suggests that 3-year-olds' dual representation of a deceptive
object's apparent and real properties may be fragile and can be
degraded by their verbal answers to appearance and reality questions. These findings are also in line with a result of Siegal, Share,
and Robinson (1989). They used Flavell et al.'s (1986) typical
verbal response paradigm. Three-year-olds were asked to answer
A - R questions concerning a deceptive object either when the
object was presented alone or after they had completed three other
A - R tasks with other deceptive objects. The children's performance on the A - R task concerning that particular object was
considerably poorer when it was presented after other A-R tasks
than when it was presented alone. Taken together, these results
suggest that participating in a verbal-response A - R task first seems
to confuse 3-year-olds and then detracts from their performance on
subsequent verbal- and nonverbal-response A - R tasks.
General Discussion
In the present study we compared a new, nonverbal response
paradigm with the typical A-R, verbal response paradigm in order
to investigate 3-year-olds' dual representation of a deceptive object's two conflicting properties. In four experiments, 3-year-olds
consistently demonstrated that they were able to represent a deceptive object's apparent and real properties. When the nonverbal
response paradigm was used, most 3-year-olds gave correct responses to requests concerning the conflicting reality and appearance of a deceptive object. This finding was replicated with dif-
APPEARANCE-REALITY DISTINCTION
ferent deceptive objects and different procedures. The final
experiment showed that the children's dual representation of a deceptive object's conflicting apparent and real properties can be degraded
by their prior descriptions of the object's appearance and reality.
Despite the children's superior performance in the nonverbalfirst condition of the nonverbal response paradigm, many of the
same children failed to respond appropriately to the A - R questions
in the verbal response paradigm. Our 3-year-olds' verbal performance replicated the typical findings of Flavell and his associates
(e.g., 35% correct in Flavell, Flavell, et al., 1983; 3 4 - 6 0 % in
Flavell et al., 1986; 36% in Flavell, Green, et al., 1987). In the
present study, across experiments about 40% of 3-year-olds correctly responded to the appearance and reality questions concerning a deceptive object. According to Flavell's cognitive deficit
hypothesis, the children who failed in the verbal response task
were unable to hold a dual representation of the deceptive object's
conflicting properties. However, the near-perfect performance by
the same children in the nonverbal response paradigm challenges
this interpretation. Children with a cognitive deficit in representing
the conflicting appearance and reality of a deceptive object should
have had difficulty with both the verbal and nonverbal response
paradigms. Clearly this was not the case.
To the best of our knowledge, our study presents the first
evidence that most 3-year-olds can succeed in an A - R task involving a novel deceptive object. They clearly do not have a cognitive
deficit in holding a dual representation of a deceptive object's two
conflicting properties when they were asked to respond nonverbally. However, 3-year-olds consistently have difficulty in passing
the verbal response task.
Although the present study was not specifically designed to
examine why 3-year-olds have difficulty in the typical A - R task,
our findings do rule out several possibilities. First, it is not the case
that most 3-year-olds do not hold a dual representation of a
deceptive object's conflicting properties given their success in our
nonverbal response paradigm. Second, it is not likely that 3-yearolds fail to understand such phrases as "something that looks like"
and "something that really is." The questions regarding the real
objects in the verbal paradigm in Experiments 1 through 3 used the
same phrases, and the children's performance was perfect in response to these questions. Third, 3-year-olds' poor performance in
the verbal paradigm is not likely to be the result of the overall
verbal nature of the task because the nonverbal response paradigm
used in the present study was also highly verbal, both in the
introductory phase of the nonverbal task and in the critical part of
the procedure (i.e., the requests for nonverbal responses). In fact,
the nonverbal requests used the same phrase (e.g., "looks like")
that was used in the verbal paradigm. Most 3-year-olds in the
present study clearly understood the phrase; otherwise they would
have failed the nonverbal response task. Fourth, 3-year-olds' difficulty with the A - R task is not due to their inability to understand
that an object can look like one thing but be something else. Earlier
studies (e.g., Woolley & Wellman, 1990) showed that 3-year-olds
and younger children can easily tell that a toy model car looks like
a car but is really a toy or that a picture of a car looks like a car but
is really a picture.
Merriman, Jarvis, and Marazita (1995) proposed an intriguing
explanation for the 3-year-olds' failure in the verbal response
paradigm. They suggested that 3-year-olds may have difficulty in
giving contradictory descriptions of the appearance and the reality
559
of an unfamiliar, deceptive object. This difficulty may stem from
3-year-olds' inappropriate use of the mutual exclusivity constraint
when labeling an unfamiliar object. Studies of word learning have
consistently shown that young children, unlike older children and
adults, strongly adhere to the assumption that each object will have
one and only one label (Markman, 1990). They are hesitant to
extend more than one label to an object when it is novel.
Merriman et al. (1995) suggested that a typical A - R task is the
very situation that readily provokes young children to apply this
mutual exclusivity constraint because for the children, the deceptive objects used are always unfamiliar and sometimes even bizarre to them. In fact, the A - R paradigm relies on the unfamiliar
nature of these objects because that is what makes them deceptive
to the children. Both phenomenism errors and intellectual realism
errors in Flavell et al.'s (1986) A - R tasks can be interpreted as
direct manifestations of young children's adherence to the mutual
exclusivity constraint. Instead of extending two labels to a deceptive object (e.g., a rock-sponge; it looks like a ROCKbut is really
a SPONGE), children respond either that the object looks like a ROCK
and is really a ROCKor that the object looks like a SPONGEand is
really a SPONGE.This explanation is consistent with other researchers' findings that 3-year-olds have no difficulty in verbally describing a familiar object as looking like A but really being B (e.g.,
toys, scale models, pictures, pretend items, and food items; DeLoache, 1991; Siegal & Share, 1990; Woolley & Wellman, 1990).
Possibly, as children become more familiar with a greater variety
of objects and gain more experience with situations in which
objects are deceptive, the mutual exclusivity assumption weakens.
Children may even apply two conflicting labels to the same object,
particularly when the labels are semantically differentiated by such
terms as look, feel, taste, and smell (e.g., an object "smells like a
lemon" but "looks like a sponge"; see Flavell et al., 1986).
The proposal put forth by Merriman et al. (1995), though
intriguing, only partially explains 3-year-olds' difficulty in our
rock-sponge and crayon-candle tasks. A considerable proportion
of the children gave incorrect responses to both the appearance and
reality questions. In other words, they applied the wrong, conflicting labels to the deceptive objects. In addition, this explanation
cannot account for 3-year-olds' failure in the full-empty cup task,
which does not require giving contradictory labels to the same
object. Nevertheless, the full-empty cup task does require children
to give conflicting descriptions of the properties of a cup. Merriman et al.'s hypothesis may therefore still hold if children apply
the mutual exclusivity constraint to giving contradictory labels to
an unfamiliar object as well as to describing its conflicting properties. At present, no evidence exists to substantiate this hypothesis.
M. Siegal (personal communication, February 2000) proposed
another plausible explanation for our 3-year-olds' success in the
nonverbal response paradigm and failure in the verbal response
paradigm. He suggested that the children's problem in the verbal
response paradigm may not be a semantic one. Rather, it may
involve the pragmatics of questioning children in experimental
situations. In the nonverbal response paradigm, the children's
answers are embedded in a social context that makes sense. In the
verbal response paradigm, children instead have to block the
implication that the task is to evaluate the effectiveness of the
deception. They may have difficulty recognizing that the scientific
purpose and relevance of the task are to determine whether they
have knowledge of the distinction between appearance and reality.
560
SAPP, LEE, AND MUIR
In other words, the typical A - R questions confuse them. This
explanation is consistent with our results. Across studies, 3-yearolds' confusion in the A - R tasks is evidenced by their error
patterns in response to the appearance and reality questions. Rather
than consistently making the same error across tasks, young children tend to commit a phenomenism error in one task and an
intellectual realism error in another task. The order effect observed
in Experiment 4 further illustrates that the confusion can spill over
to children's responses to the nonverbal requests.
Overall, the present data reconcile discrepancies between the
results of Flavell and his colleagues (e.g., Flavell et al., 1986) and
other researchers' findings of early competence in related tasks
(DeLoache, 1991; Siegal & Share, 1990; Woolley & Wellman,
1990). Woolley and Wellman's (1990) proposal concerning the
developmental course of dual representation is supported and
extended. They suggested that A - R understanding progresses
gradually through three phases: understanding of reality versus
nonreality in the broadest sense by 2 years of age; understanding
of appearance versus reality, broadly construed at 3 years of age;
and understanding of appearance versus reality, narrowly construed (i.e., illusion-reality distinction) at 4 years of age. Woolley
and Wellman stated that 3-year-olds understand the differences
between the reality and the appearance of familiar items such as
toys and pictures but fail to understand illusion-reality differences.
Our findings suggest that 3-year-olds also understand the A - R
distinction involving unfamiliar and deceptive objects (referred to
as illusory objects by Woolley and Wellman). These developmental milestones represent significant yet small steps toward more
complex A - R distinctions between apparent versus real emotions
(Harris & Gross, 1988) and between what is said and what is meant
(Winner, 1988).
On a final note, Flavell's findings (Flavell, 1986, 1988, 1993;
Flavell, Flavell, & Green, 1983; Taylor & Flavell, 1984) have been
used as evidence that 3-year-olds have difficulty with metarepresentation, or simultaneously holding two conflicting representations. We would like to point out that both Flavell's verbal paradigm and our own nonverbal response paradigm inevitably contain
a temporal component. The A - R questions or requests can only be
presented to the child sequentially. Hence, neither paradigm addresses whether children actually no simultaneously hold two
representations of a deceptive object. The question of simultaneous
representations of a deceptive object's two conflicting properties
can be addressed only by using a paradigm without a temporal
component, which may be methodologically impossible.
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Received October 12, 1999
Revision received February 29, 2000
Accepted March 1, 2000 •