Young Deceivers: Executive Functioning and Antisocial Lie‐telling in Preschool Aged Children

Abstract

The present study examined the emergence of antisocial lie-telling in very young children. Lie-telling was studied in relation to executive functioning skills and children's abilities to identify both truths and lies. A total of 65 children (M age in months = 31.75, SD = 1.87) participated in a modified temptation resistance paradigm (TRP; designed to elicit spontaneous lies). Executive functioning was measured through an inhibitory control task and a forward search planning task. The Truth/Lie Identification task was administered (Lyon, Carrick, & Quas, 2010) to measure children's abilities to accurately distinguish truths and lies. During the TRP, a total of 89.23% children peeked at the toy when a research assistant left the room, and of those children, 29.31% lied to the research assistant. Significant differences on executive functioning measures were found between lie-tellers and confessors, as well as for the Truth/Lie Identification task. Lie-tellers had higher scores on measures of inhibitory control and forward search planning. Lie-tellers also had higher accuracy on the Truth/Lie Identification task than confessors. This study provides a unique contribution to the literature by examining 2.5-year-old children's emerging lie-telling abilities, a relatively understudied age during which fledgling lie-telling emerges.

The contributions of mental state understanding and executive functioning to preschool‐aged children's lie‐telling

“…Although previous research has found support for the role of both ToM (Hsu & Cheung, 2013;Talwar et al, 2007;Williams et al, 2017) and inhibitory control (Evans & Lee, 2013;, the current research is some of the first to examine pre-ToM tasks in relation to the development of lie-telling behaviour in very young children. First, the current results support the contribution of emerging ToM abilities to lie-telling behaviour during the primary stage.…”

“…As in previous experimental studies with preschool-aged children that used the TRP (e.g., Ding et al, 2015;Evans & Lee, 2013;Ma et al, 2015;Williams et al, 2017), most of the children peeked at the 'forbidden' toy during the TRP. The contribution of inhibitory control and working memory to children's lie-telling behaviours was also examined.…”

“…Despite the observational and anecdotal evidence that children's lie-telling behaviours may emerge as young as 2.5 years of age (Darwin, 1877;Newton et al, 2000;Wilson, Smith, & Ross, 2003), very few researchers have examined lie-telling in children below 4 years of age (Ding et al, 2015;Evans & Lee, 2013;Ma, Evans, Liu, Luo, & Xu, 2015;Williams et al, 2017), and no researchers have examined the role of ToM in relation to children's lie-telling prior to 3 years of age. Consequently, the role of ToM in the early period of Talwar and Lee's (2008) primary stage remains relatively unknown.…”

“…To date, only two studies have examined the relationship between EF and lie-telling in children between 2 and 4 years of age (Evans & Lee, 2013;Williams et al, 2017). To date, only two studies have examined the relationship between EF and lie-telling in children between 2 and 4 years of age (Evans & Lee, 2013;Williams et al, 2017).…”

“…To date, only two studies have examined the relationship between EF and lie-telling in children between 2 and 4 years of age (Evans & Lee, 2013;Williams et al, 2017). Furthermore, in Evans and Lee's (2013) research, a measure of working memory, in combination with inhibitory control (i.e., Shape Stroop), predicted lie-telling, while Williams et al (2017) found that inhibitory control alone had an independent effect in young children's lietelling behaviours. Furthermore, in Evans and Lee's (2013) research, a measure of working memory, in combination with inhibitory control (i.e., Shape Stroop), predicted lie-telling, while Williams et al (2017) found that inhibitory control alone had an independent effect in young children's lietelling behaviours.…”