The roles of liar intention, lie content, and theory of mind in children’s evaluation of lies

Cheung, Him; Siu, Tik Sze Carrey; Chen, Lan

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2014.12.002

Cited by 53 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Both Cheung et al . () and Heyman et al . () found that lying for the sake of politeness was considered acceptable to 7‐ to 11‐year‐olds compared to lying for a selfish purpose and telling the blunt truth in an impolite way.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The present results are consistent with previous findings showing a sensitivity to liar motive in school‐age children (Cheung et al ., ; Heyman et al ., ; Peterson, Peterson, & Seeto, ). Both Cheung et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We examine children from 5 to 6.5 years because of three reasons that are tied to the purpose of this research. First, some previous studies have already shown that 7‐ to 11‐year‐olds do consider selfish versus prosocial motives in lie evaluation (Cheung et al ., ; Heyman et al ., ), and thus, we are interested in further extending these findings to a younger age. Second, to allow the lie labelling manipulation to take full effect, we need to examine children that are verbally mature enough to fully grasp the core meaning as well as all the overtones of the word ‘lie’.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effect of lie labelling on children's evaluation of selfish, polite, and altruistic lies

Cheung

Chan

Tsui

2016

British J of Dev Psycho

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This study investigates how 5- and 6-year-olds' evaluations of selfish, polite, and altruistic lies change as a result of whether these false statements are explicitly labelled as lies. We are also interested in how interpretive theory of mind may correlate with such evaluations with and without a lie label. Our results showed that labelling lowered children's evaluations for the polite and altruistic lies, but not for the selfish lies. Interpretive theory of mind correlated positively with the evaluation difference between the polite and altruistic lies and that between the selfish and altruistic lies in the label, but not in the non-label condition. Correlation between the selfish and altruistic lies and that between the polite and altruistic lies were stronger with than without labelling, after controlling for age, and verbal and non-verbal intelligence. We conclude that lie labelling biases children towards more negative evaluations for non-selfish lies and makes them see lies of different motives as more similar. If a lie label is applied, whether lies of different motives are still evaluated differently depends on interpretive theory of mind, which reflects the child's ability to represent and allow different interpretations of an ambiguous reality.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effect of lie labelling on children's evaluation of selfish, polite, and altruistic lies

Cheung

Chan

Tsui

2016

British J of Dev Psycho

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“…Semantic leakage control, the ability to effectively maintain a lie, was also related to second-order false belief understanding (i.e., the ability to make attributions about what one person's thoughts or false beliefs are about another person's thoughts or false beliefs). In another study, Cheung, Siu, and Chen (2015) examined the relationship between 7-to 9-year-old children's ratings of prosocial lies as well as more selfish antisocial lies. The researchers also measured children's theory of mind understanding and found a relationship between children's sensitivity to a liar's intention and second-order false belief understanding.…”

Section: Theory Of Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of executive functions and theory of mind in children’s prosocial lie-telling

Williams

Moore

Crossman

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…We know that children, from around the age of 3 years, are aware that people's statements may be true or false (Strichartz & Burton, 1990;Talwar & Lee, 2002); children will begin to contemplate the intentions of a dishonest speaker from around the age of 6 years (Cheung, Siu, & Chen, 2015;Strichartz & Burton, 1990). When children have a well-established knowledge about a fact, they are able to reject a false proposition from another person (Clement, Koenig, & Harris, 2004).…”

Section: Challenge Typementioning

confidence: 99%

Preparing children for cross-examination: do the practice questions matter?

Irvine

Jack

Zajac

2016

Psychology, Crime & Law

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Research has shown that a brief intervention involving practice and feedback can help children maintain accuracy when challenged with cross-examination-style questions. To date, however, researchers have prepared children using the same crossexamination challenges that they would encounter during the subsequent cross-examination interview. It is unknown whether the intervention will still be effective when children later face novel cross-examination-style questions. Six-to 11-year-old children (n = 132) took part in a staged memory event, and were then interviewed with analogues of direct-examination (1-2 days later) and cross-examination (6-8 weeks later). One week prior to the cross-examination interview, some children participated in a preparation session, where they were given practice answering cross-examination-style questions about an unrelated topic, and feedback on their responses. For half of these children, the crossexamination-style challenges they encountered during the preparation session were the same as the challenges they subsequently faced during cross-examination; for the others, there was no overlap. Relative to a control group that did not receive the intervention, the preparation session resulted in better performance during cross-examination, regardless of the degree of overlap. These findings are encouraging given that we can never predict the questions that cross-examining lawyers will ask children. ARTICLE HISTORY

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The roles of liar intention, lie content, and theory of mind in children’s evaluation of lies

Cited by 53 publications

References 44 publications

Effect of lie labelling on children's evaluation of selfish, polite, and altruistic lies

Effect of lie labelling on children's evaluation of selfish, polite, and altruistic lies

The role of executive functions and theory of mind in children’s prosocial lie-telling

Preparing children for cross-examination: do the practice questions matter?

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