Liar, liar, working memory on fire: Investigating the role of working memory in childhood verbal deception.
The aim of the current study was to investigate the role of working memory in verbal deception in children. We presented 6- and 7-year-olds with a temptation resistance paradigm; they played a trivia game and were then given an opportunity to peek at the final answers on the back of a card. Measures of both verbal and visuospatial working memory were included. The good liars performed better on the verbal working memory test in both processing and recall compared with the bad liars. However, there was no difference in visuospatial working scores between good liars and bad liars. This pattern suggests that verbal working memory plays a role in processing and manipulating the multiple pieces of information involved in lie-telling.
Department of Psychology, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL 32224, USA. Electronic address: t.alloway@unf.edu.
Tracy Packiam
TP
Alloway
University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK.
Fiona
F
McCallum
Department of Psychology, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL 32224, USA.
Ross G
RG
Alloway
Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TP, UK.
Elena
E
Hoicka
D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D008192:Deception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
Deception; Lying; Second-order belief; Semantic leakage; Verbal working memory; Visuo-spatial working memory