Preschoolers' understanding of pretense and presumption of congruity between action and representation

In a series of 4 studies, A. S. Lillard's (1993) paradigm for studying preschoolers' understanding of pretense was replicated and systematically examined. The design varied the extent of the contradiction built into Lillard's format. Decreases in contradictory information yielded increases in the incidence of correct judgments indicative of an implicitly representational understanding of pretense. The findings present a challenge to A. S. Lillard's (1993) conceptual analysis of pretense and suggest that methods adopted from the classic false-belief paradigm of H. Wimmer and J. Perner (1983) may be inappropriate for assessing preschoolers' understanding of pretense.