Development of the appearance-reality representation between 3 and 5 years: A matter of abstraction and integration of perceptual and functional properties of the object?

Our research focuses on the development of representations of perceptual and functional properties of objects using appearance-reality tasks that were solved by 64 children aged 3 to 5 years. The materials of the selected tasks included various objects ambiguous realistic, symbolic, and imaginary in a cartoon in order to vary the proximity between the function evoked by the appearance of the object and the function related to its reality. The design of the study counterbalanced assessing appearance after demonstration of reality and assessing reality after the demonstration of fictitious property in order to investigate the ability of the child to change the representation of the object. Results show, for the 3-year-olds, a preponderance of "phenomenalists errors" for symbolic objects as well as for the cartoon task, but a preponderance of "realistic mistakes" for realistic objects. The responses of 4-year-olds were centered on functional properties, and this in all events. Only 5-year-olds children were solving the problem of objects identity of the object and were easily changing the object's representation. The results are discussed with emphasis on the theory of H. Wallon.