Angela M. Crossman

From little white lies to filthy liars: the evolution of honesty and deception in young children.

Though it is frequently condemned, lie-telling is a common and frequent activity in interpersonal interactions, with apparent social risks and benefits. The current review examines the development of deception among children. It is argued that early lying is normative, reflecting childrens emerging cognitive and social development. Children lie to preserve self-interests as well as for the benefit of others. With age, children learn about the social norms that promote honesty while encouraging occasional prosocial lie-telling. Yet, lying can become a problem behavior with frequent or inappropriate use over time. Chronic lie-telling of any sort risks social consequences, such as the loss of credibility and damage to relationships. By middle childhood, chronic reliance on lying may be related to poor development of conscience, weak self-regulatory control, and antisocial behavior, and it could be indicative of maladjustment and put the individual in conflict with the environment. The goal of the current chapter is to capture the complexity of lying and build a preliminary understanding of how childrens social experiences with their environments, their own dispositions, and their developing cognitive maturity interact, over time, to predict their lying behavior and, for some, their chronic and problem lying. Implications for fostering honesty in young children are discussed.

An Exploratory Analysis of Gender Differences in Punitiveness in Two Countries

Although social scientists have long studied attitudes toward severity of punishment, theoretically driven, validated measures that gauge a female—male gap in punitiveness are rare and those tested in different countries are even more so. Studies conducted in different geographical locations and/or at different times reveal inconsistent findings on whether such a gap in fact exists and, if so, whether women or men are more punitive. As a result, it is not clear whether individual differences in punitiveness are due to the differences between men and women or to the type of measures used. To address this shortcoming, the current study explored the putative female—male gap in punitiveness by using the same multi-item measure of individual punitiveness with two very different samples, one selected in Georgia (country) and the second in the New York metropolitan area (NYC). The results showed that while females and males were not distinctly different in their views on punishment and sentencing laws in either country, women and men were punitive in different ways. This finding partially supports previously reported results. In addition, individuals in the NYC sample seemed to be comparatively more punitive than the individuals in the Georgian sample. Limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Youth deception: Malingering traumatic stress

To explore how youths malinger symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), college students completed the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI) under standard instructions (honest condition). Then, after learning the symptomatology of traumatic stress, they completed the TSI a second time attempting to fake symptoms of PTSD (deception condition). Motivation level was manipulated: 100 students were given course credits, allowing them to avoid writing a research paper, while 50 students were paid and given the incentive of bonus money for successfully faking PTSD symptoms. Cutoff values were applied to the validity scores to identify students who were malingering by exaggerating or by over-endorsing symptoms. Overall, a majority of participants (57%) responded in a manner that fabricated symptoms of PTSD in the deception condition. However, many of the fabricators (45%) did not pass the validity scales and were identified as malingerers. In addition, most of the successful malingers (66%) also over-endorsed the symptoms of dysphoria and reduced internal resources. This pattern of responding suggests that the malingering youths did not selectively endorse only symptoms of traumatic stress. Hence, some youths are capable of using minimal, publicly available information to fake symptoms of PTSD, regardless of motivation.

Polite, instrumental, and dual liars: Relation to children’s developing social skills and cognitive ability

Lying is an interpersonal exercise that requires the intentional creation of a false belief in another’s mind. As such, children’s development of lie-telling is related to their increasing understanding of others and may reflect the acquisition of basic social skills. Although certain types of lies may support social relationships, other types of lies are considered antisocial in nature. The goal of this study was to compare several possible correlates, such as cognitive ability and children’s behavior patterns, that may be associated with children’s (N = 133) use of lies in socially acceptable versus socially unacceptable ways. Children engaged in two lie-telling paradigms: one to measure socially accepted (polite) lies and one to measure socially unaccepted (instrumental) lies. Results indicate that instrumental liars were young with low theory of mind (ToM) scores and had high social skills. Polite liars were the oldest, had high ToM, and had similar levels of social skills as instrumental liars. Truth-tellers and dual liars had lower social skills and moderate ToM in comparison to the instrumental and polite liars. These findings suggest that children use lies selectively to achieve their social goals, and also suggest that children’s lying behavior may change from being self-motivated to being other-motivated as they age, which may reflect socialization toward socially accepted behavior.

Influence of social factors on the relation between lie-telling and children's cognitive abilities.

Lie-telling may be part of a normative developmental process for children. However, little is known about the complex interaction of social and cognitive factors related to this developmental behavior. The current study examined parenting style, maternal exposure to stressors, and childrens cognitive abilities in relation to childrens antisocial lie-telling behavior in an experimental setting. Children (3-6years, N=157) participated in a modified temptation resistance paradigm to elicit spontaneous lies. Results indicate that high authoritative parenting and high inhibitory control interact to predict a lower propensity to lie, but those who did lie had better semantic leakage control. This suggests that although childrens lie-telling may be normative during early development, the relation to childrens cognitive abilities can be moderated by responsive parenting behaviors that discourage lying.

Question type and its effect on children ' s maintenance and accuracy during courtroom testimony

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of question type (open-ended, prompted, reverse order and chronological order recall) on children’s ability to maintain a truth or a lie in a two-part mock-courtroom study. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 96 children (M age=131.00 months) between 9 and 12 years of age were asked to testify about an interaction with a research assistant the week prior. They were assigned to one of four conditions (true/false×assertion/denial). Findings – Results indicate that question type has an influence on children’s ability to maintain their condition. Results also indicate that regardless of question type, children have difficulty recalling information sequentially. Practical implications – Implications of the current research support the use of various question types, including increasing the cognitive load demands, when interviewing children. Originality/value – To date, this is the first study to investigate the use of reverse order questio...

High Cognitive Load During Cross-Examination: Does It Improve Detection of Children's Truths and Lies?

The current study used a high cognitive load cross-examination procedure to determine whether this would improve undergraduate students’ ability to detect deception in children aged 9 to 12 years. The participants (n = 88) were asked to determine whether childrens accounts of an event included a true denial, false denial, true assertion or false assertion about a game played during a home visit occurring one week prior. Overall, the high cognitive load cross-examination did not improve detection rates, in that participants were at chance level for both direct examination (49.4%) and cross-examination (52.3%). Accuracy for true stories was greater than for false stories. Cross-examination improved the detection rates of the false stories, but worsened the accuracy for the true stories. The participants did however rate younger childrens true reports to be more credible and believable than their false reports. Participants rated older childrens false reports as more credible and believable than their true reports.

Executive Function and Temperamental Fear Concurrently Predict Deception in School-Aged Children.

The decision to intentionally withhold truthful information, or deception, is a key component of moral development and may be a precursor to more serious anti-social tendencies. Two factors, executive function (EF) and temperamental fear are each thought to influence childhood deception. Few studies, however, have explored deception in relation to both of these factors simultaneously. This was the goal of the present study. EF, as measured by a working memory (WM) task, and temperamental fear, as measured via maternal report were assessed in relation to observed deceptive behavior among six- to nine-year-old children (N = 43). Results showed that children displaying high WM capacity and high temperamental fear were more likely to exhibit deceptive behavior. Implications for predictors of childhood deception and applications for moral education are discussed.

Cognition and the Child Witness: Understanding the Impact of Cognitive Development in Forensic Contexts

© 2012 Segovia and Crossman, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Cognition and the Child Witness: Understanding the Impact of Cognitive Development in Forensic Contexts