Appearances are deceiving: Observing the world as it looks and how it really is. Theory of mind performances investigated in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children

Appearance-reality distinction understanding (AR) in preschoolers is worth further consideration. This also goes for its relationship with false belief understanding (FB). This study helped fill these gaps by assessing 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children’s performances on an appearance-reality distinction task and by investigating relationships with unexpected location, deceptive content, and deception comprehension task performances. 91 preschoolers participated in this study divided into 3 groups: (1) 37 children, M-age 3.4 years; (2) 23 children, M-age 4.5 years; (3) 31 children, M-age 5.4 years. A developmental trend was found where appearance-reality distinction understanding was significantly influenced by age. If wrong answers were particularly high at 3 years old, they greatly decreased through 4- and 5-year-old children. 3-year-old children also tended to fail in FB tasks, instead at 4 and 5 years old they performed AR tasks better than FB tasks. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.