Telling the truth to mislead: moral and cognitive correlates of school-aged children’s second-order lying

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

Introduction: Second order-lying represents the usage of both truthful and false information to mislead another. To our knowledge, there are no studies investigating this deceptive strategy in school-age children. In addition, little is known about the influence of contextual factors on this type of deceptive behavior in children.
Aims and Method: First, we wanted to explore the association between children’s second-order lying, advanced forms of theory of mind (ToM; second-order ToM, and interpretive diversity understanding) and executive functioning (EF; inhibition, shifting, and working memory). Second, we wanted to investigate the effect that moral stories have on children’s lie-telling in competitive contexts. To these ends, we will recruit 162 8 to-12 years-olds (effect size of .40, α at .05, and power at .95).
Parents will fill two questionnaires, the Social Skills Rating System (Gresham & Elliott, 1990) evaluating children’s social skills, and ToM Inventory (Hutchins et al., 2012) as a parental account for children’s ToM.
Next, second-order lying behavior will be assessed using the hide-and-seek game used by Sai and collab. (2018) in which children have to hide a coin in one of their hands and to prevent the experimenter from finding it. For the experimental groups, the confederate will systematically choose or not the hand indicated by the child across a maximum of 30 trials, whereas for the control group, they will randomly choose one of the children’s hands.
ToM will be assessed using the “John thinks that Mary thinks that…” story (Perner & Wimmer, 1985), and the Constructivist Theory of Mind Interview (Weimer et al., 2017). As for EF, we will use the Inhibition and Shifting task from NEPSY (Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment; Korkman et al., 1998) and the Backward Digit Span task (Wechsler, 2003).
Lastly, to test the effect that negative moral stories have on children’s second-order lying behavior, children from the control and experimental neutral story group will be presented with “The Rabbit and the Hare” story before engaging in the deceptive game, whereas children from the experimental negative story group will presented with “The boy who cried wolf” story (Lee et al., 2014).
Analysis plan: In order to test the predictive power of the cognitive measurements, a series of linear logistic regressions will be employed. As such, we expect that ToM and EF measurements to be positively associated with children’s ability to lie strategically. The effect of the negative moral story upon children’s lie-telling will be tested by employing a variance analysis.
Conclusion and implications: The current can provide valuable insights for moral education and how we can put more emphasis on others’ mental states rather than behavior. Considering the possible effect of moral stories on school-age children’s honesty, it can also inform upon the validity of this strategy to promote honesty among children in legal contexts.
Feasibility: To ensure the feasibility of the current proposal, we started the data gathering process in two schools. From October 2020 until February 2021 we will complete the testing session, following that in March 2021 to conduct the data analyses.

Authors

• Narcisa Prodan, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai
  Presenting Author

• Daniela Teodora Seucan, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura A. Visu-Petra, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai
  Non-Presenting Author