Poster #186 - Do 3-year-olds know how to lie? An interaction-based experiment to measure spontaneous lying in children.

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Previous research suggests that intentional lying and false belief implementation emerges around the age of 4 years (e.g. Evans & Lee, 2013). All paradigms measuring lie-telling and deception, however, are based on verbal descriptions and typically elicit lying in response to verbal questions (e.g. temptation-resistance-paradigm) or direct instructions, which might impair children’s deceptive abilities (Rubio-Fernández & Geurts, 2016). In contrast, paradigms measuring truth telling often employ interaction-based measures and find that infants inform others already in the second year of life (Liszkowski et al., 2008).
Therefore, we developed a new interaction-based paradigm to shed light on spontaneous, nonverbal lying and false belief implementation in 3-year-old children. We designed an interactive puppet play in which a protagonist played with the child and an object and then hid the object in one of two boxes. While the protagonist was temporarily absent, an enemy (bear) or a friend (frog) searched for the hidden object (between-subject design). Of question was whether children spontaneously inform the frog (i.e. helping) or misinform the bear (i.e. lying) by pointing to the true or false location of the object.

Results revealed that children (N=33) applied various strategies to prevent the bear from stealing the toy (e.g. verbal lying, deceptive pointing, physical exclusion). Children actively misinformed the bear more often than the frog (t=2.65, p <.05, d=.92) suggesting that some children (44%) younger than 4 years are already able to spontaneously implant false beliefs in others. However, children more frequently informed than misinformed the bear about the toy's location, and this correlated with age (r=-.67, p <.01). In a subsequent study we investigated whether a lack of personal motivation and relevance to deceive might have reduced deceptive behavior.

Using the same interactive paradigm, we manipulated the motivation to lie in a 2x2 between-subject design with 3-year-olds (data collection ongoing, current N = 32, planned N = 80). Specifically, we manipulated the child’s motive to lie: Instead of playing together with the protagonist and an object, the child could either obtain the sticker for herself (egocentric condition) or help the protagonist obtain the sticker (prosocial condition). In addition, we asked children explicit questions about their plans to lie or help (in 2 out of 4 trials) to pit spontaneous versus verbally elicited behavior against each other. Further, we tested for underlying cognitive processes (Theory of Mind, Executive functioning) with false belief, knowledge-ignorance and the Bear&Dragon task as well as for social factors (e.g. parental style, siblings) and daily use of lying with questionnaires.

Current results indicate more lying in the enemy than in the friend condition with no difference between egocentric and prosocial motivation and about half of the sample lying at least once. Verbal responses appear not to be related to children’s spontaneous interactive behaviors. The cognitive measures will be used to explain further variance in children’s spontaneous lying under 4 years of age.
Overall, this study will contribute to a deeper and comprehensive insight into children’s developing understanding and spontaneous manipulation of other’s mental states.

Authors

• Mareike Heinrich, University of Hamburg
  Presenting Author

• Sebastian Dörrenberg, University of Hamburg
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ulf Liszkowski, University of Hamburg
  Non-Presenting Author