Children's differentiation of mentality and reality in pretense - precursor to a theory of mind?

The ability to differentiate mentality from reality in the context of prete nd play has been discussed as a possible precursor to a Theory of Mind in c hildren. Support for this interpretation comes from a study by Flavell, Fla vell, & Green (1987) who found that 3-year-olds were able to differentiate correctly between pretense and reality, but failed to distinguish appearanc e from reality in parallel tasks. In three experiments we explored the repl icability of this finding in German-speaking children (using different tran slations for the English verb "to pretend"), and its generality across diff erent task contexts (trick-objects vs. disguise). We replicated the origina l finding by Flavell et al. (1987) in the trick object context, but found t hat it did not generalise to the context of disguise: When children were qu estioned about pretense identities and real identities of both disguised pu ppets and real persons, they did not perform better than on parallel appear ance-reality tasks. This pattern of findings does not support the assumptio n that 3-year-olds possess an understanding of mental representation which they demonstrate in the familiar context of symbolic play. Rather, the find ings suggest that young children have a behavioral rather than a mentalisti c understanding of pretend play ("acting-as-if"), that is, that they differ entiate pretend-actions from reality, but do not understand the representat ional character of these actions.