3-031 - Children's Honesty

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children’s lie-telling has been found to develop as early as two to three years of age (Evans & Lee, 2013; Williams et al., 2017) and increase with age (Lee, 2013). This symposium examines the development of children’s honesty and strategies for overcoming children’s lie-telling behaviors in various populations. The first study examined how reading moral stories and children’s anticipatory emotions during the stories can influence 3- to 6-year-olds from Singapore’s honesty. The second study examines honesty promotion techniques that are effective for both maltreated and non-maltreated 4- to -9year-olds including the use of back-channel utterances (e.g., mm-hmm), promising to tell the truth, and the putative confession technique. The third study, examines 6- to 18-year-olds with intellectual disabilities’ forthcomingness in disclosing a transgression and ideal interview conditions for obtaining detailed honest reports. Finally, the fourth study examines 7 to 9 year old Canadian children’s willingness to lie to conceal a transgression committed by their collective and predictors of their (dis)honesty. Taken together, these presentations provide a developmental picture of children’s honesty with populations from a variety of cultural, cognitive abilities, and environmental backgrounds. Furthermore, recommendations will be made around methods for obtaining accurate reports from children and how to promote the moral virtue of honesty.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Angela D Evans, Brock University

Individual Presentations

• The Roles of Moral Stories and Anticipatory Emotions in Predicting Children’s Honest Behaviour - Presenting Author: Xiao Pan Ding, National University of Singapore; Non-Presenting Author: Joey Cheng Kei Teng, National University of Singapore

• Increasing maltreated and nonmaltreated children’s honesty about a minor transgression - Presenting Author: Kelly McWilliams, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Non-Presenting Author: Stacia Stolzenberg, Arizona State University; Non-Presenting Author: Shanna Williams, University of Southern California; Non-Presenting Author: Thomas Lyon, University of Southern California

• Using the Cognitive Interview to question children with intellectual disabilities about a transgression - Presenting Author: Joshua Wyman, McGill University; Non-Presenting Author: Christine Saykaly, McGill University; Non-Presenting Author: Valentine Clary, McGill University; Non-Presenting Author: Victoria Talwar, McGill University

• Lying for the Collective in Mid- to Late- Childhood - Presenting Author: Victoria W Dykstra, Brock University; Non-Presenting Author: Kaila C. Bruer, University of Toronto; Non-Presenting Author: Heather Price, Thompson Rivers University; Non-Presenting Author: Angela D Evans, Brock University