摘要：The purpose of the present study was to explore the development of knowledge about the appearance-reality distinction and its relation to children`s developing theory of mind. The subjects were 90 children,15 boys and 15 girls each at the ages of 3,4,and 5. The performance of the appearance-reality distinction was compared on illusory object,color,pretend event,and picture tasks. The data were collected by individual testing and analyzed by two-way ANOVA with repeated measures. The results showed that there were significant differences between 3-and 4-year-olds in the appearance-reality distinction,while there was no significant difference according to gender or type of tasks. It was also found that children at the age of 3 and 4,committed phenomenism errors more often than intellectual realism errors,while 5 year olds did not show particular differences.
