Children's use of deception in a naturalistic setting was observed longitudinally in 40 families when children were 2 and 4 years old, and again two years later. Goals included describing children's lying behavior and parents' reactions to lies, and comparing lies to other false statements. Lies were commonly told to avoid responsibility for transgressions, to falsely accuse siblings, and to gain control over another's behavior. Unlike children's other false statements (e.g., mistakes, pretense), lies were distinctly self-serving. Parents rarely addressed the act of lying itself but often challenged the veracity of lies or addressed the underlying transgression. Older siblings lied more often than younger ones, and parents who allowed older siblings to lie at Time 1 had children who lied more often at Time 2. Results are considered from a speech-act perspective and in terms of children's developing understanding of mental states.In this study we examine children's use of deception in a naturalistic setting. Our goals were threefold: The first was to describe children's lying, including the frequency of lying, as well as to whom children lie, their reasons for deceiving, and the content of their lies. The second goal was to examine how parents react to their children's lies in an effort to understand if, and how parents socialize their children to believe that lying is unacceptable. The third was to explore the distinctions between lying and other false statements by examining self-serving biases in children's falsehoods, along with any developmental changes in the degree to which children's lies could potentially serve their interests. The Nature of Children's LiesIn a recent paper, Lee (2000) has analyzed children's understanding of lying from a speech-act perspective. Accordingly, lies are considered to be intentional acts that serve social functions and follow rules within particular social-cultural contexts. One social rule that is broken when individuals lie is Grice's (1980) Maxim of Quality, which specifies that conversationalists should make true rather than false statements.Correspondence should be sent to Anne E.

Therapeutic/care management study, level III.

No abstract

Sibling conflict is a fairly routine, even commonplace interaction in most families with young children. Disputes may occur over property, the progress of play or the harm children do to one another. As issues arise, parents often find themselves at the center of their childrenk -Utes.Our research over the past eight years has focused on observations of conflicts between young siblings, how parents become involved in these encounters, what they do to uy to help the children settle their differences, and what children might learn about family life from the interventions of their parents. Developmental psychology provides three important models that we have applied to our examinations of pmnts' mles in their childm's conflicts. First, there is Piaget's well-known position (1932) that parents actually impede their children's understanding of morality which develops instead through interaction with agemates. According to Piaget, mutual respect between equals enables children to comprehend that justice based on reciprocity is essential to preserving cooperative relationships. In contrast, parents endorse contradictory rules that are not well understood by their children. More important, because these rules derive their force from the parent's authority and are thus external to the child, they are antithetical to a morality based on the free and mutual acceptance of moral pmaples. According to Piaget: "Resting as it does on equality and reciprocity, justice can only come into being by free consent. Council of Canada. We are grateful to the families who participated in the study and to those who assisted in collecting and manscribing the data.