Ser Helps Speakers Identify "Real" Properties.

We examined the effects of language on developing knowledge of the distinction between "real" and "apparent" properties of bjects by comparing the perfomance of English- and Spanish-spiaking monolingual and bilingual children on an appearance-reality task in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, monolingul - s nf Spanish-speaking preschoolers participated in an a peprance-reality task in which Spanish speakers heard forms of the Spanish verb ser in place of the English verb "is" in the reality questions and forms of the Spanish verb estar in palce of "is" in the appearance questions. Spanish speakers performed reliably better than English speakers on the question about the real properties of less familiar objecrd.