The ability to distinguish the appearance of an object or situation (e.g., ‘looks like …’) from its underlying reality (‘really truly is’). For example, a white lamb seen through a red filter appears to be red, but is really white. This ability has been hypothesized to be maturationally constrained as it appears universally between 3 and 5 years of age. This distinction, dealt with extensively by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), still remains a deep-seated problem in philosophy.
See Animistic thinking, Autism, Geocentric perspective, Implicate order, Ontology, Theory of the child’s mind (ToM)