Elsevier

Cognitive Psychology

Volume 15, Issue 4, October 1983, Pages 459-466
Cognitive Psychology

A comparison between the development of the appearance-reality distinction in the People's Republic of China and the United States

https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(83)90015-4Get rights and content

Abstract

A study of the appearance-reality distinction in American 3- to 5-year-olds was replicated with Chinese 3- to 5-year-olds. The error patterns, age changes, and absolute levels of performance were similar in the two samples. It was speculated that the acquisition of this distinction may be a universal, possibly age-linked development that is probably fueled by experiences with appearance-reality discrepancies that are available in all cultures.

References (3)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (42)

  • Theory of mind and executive function in early childhood: A cross-cultural investigation

    2022, Cognitive Development
    Citation Excerpt :

    Nativist, modular theories claim that ToM is an innate, universal human capacity (e.g., Fodor, 1992; Scholl & Leslie 2001). Early studies of East Asian samples also supported the universality of ToM (Flavell, Zhang, Zou, Dong, & Qi, 1983; Gardner et al., 1988; Lee, Olson, & Torrance, 1999). However, other studies have reported up to a 2-year delay in success on false belief tasks in children in different countries (for meta-analytic reviews, see Liu, Wellman, Tardif, & Sabbagh, 2008; Wellman et al., 2001), challenging the idea that ToM emerges in the same way across cultures, and therefore proposing culture-specific accounts of ToM (e.g., Nelson, 2004; Astington, 2003; Happé, Cook, & Bird, 2017).

  • The Acquisition of Mandarin

    2022, The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition: Volume 3
View all citing articles on Scopus

This research was supported in part by the government of the People's Republic of China, the Foundation for Child Development, and NICHD Grant HD 09814.

View full text