Young children's emerging ability to make false statements.
This study examined the origins of children's ability to make consciously false statements, a necessary component of lying. Children 2 to 5 years of age were rewarded for claiming that they saw a picture of a bird when viewing pictures of fish. They were asked outcome questions ("Do you win/lose?"), recognition questions ("Do you have a bird/fish?"), and recall questions ("What do you have?"), which were hypothesized to vary in difficulty depending on the need for consciousness of falsity (less for outcome questions) and self-generation of an appropriate response (more for recall questions). The youngest children (2½ to 3½ years old) were above chance on outcome questions, but it was not until age 3½ that children performed above chance on recognition questions or were capable of maintaining false claims across question types. Findings have implications for understanding the emergence of deception in young children.
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, 3620 South McClintock Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0071, USA. eahern@usc.edu
Elizabeth C
EC
Ahern
Thomas D
TD
Lyon
Jodi A
JA
Quas
D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D008192:Deception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors
Child Dev. 1989 Dec;60(6):1263-77
2612240
Child Dev. 2008 Jul-Aug;79(4):866-81
18717895
Law Hum Behav. 2010 Apr;34(2):141-9
19263199
Dev Psychol. 1999 Mar;35(2):561-8
10082026
Dev Psychol. 2007 May;43(3):804-10
17484589
Law Hum Behav. 2002 Aug;26(4):395-415
12182530
J Child Lang. 1993 Oct;20(3):607-18
8300778
Law Hum Behav. 1999 Oct;23(5):539-55
10487148
Child Dev. 1998 Jun;69(3):672-91
9680679
Child Dev. 2003 Sep-Oct;74(5):1297-313
14552399
First Lang. 2008 Nov;28(4):431-442
20953285
Dev Psychol. 2002 May;38(3):352-62
12005379
Cognition. 1994 Nov;53(2):129-53
7805351