Poster #197 - Self-Regulation’s Role in Deception Detection and Theory of Mind

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

The field of social cognition is continuously advancing as researchers explore different relationships among its foundational skills. Theory of Mind (ToM) and Executive Functions (EF) are two skills that foster self-regulation and perspective taking abilities in young children. Previous research examining EF and ToM calls for an examination of how EF might mediate social influences on ToM (Devine & Hughes, 2014). Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate how executive function (EF) might explain the relationship between deception detection and ToM, as deception detection is one skill that contributes to a broader concept of social cognition. Preschoolers ages 3-5 (N=93) completed two EF tasks examining inhibitory control (Grass/Snow; Gerstadt, Hong, & Diamond, 1994) and working memory (Forward Digit Span; Davis & Pratt, 1996), along with a measure of deception detection using the Implausible Lie Task (Lee et al., 2002). Teachers completed the Children’s Social Understanding Scale (Tahiroglu et al., 2014) to assess children’s ToM. Results indicated that EF mediated the relationship between deception detection and ToM. There was a significant indirect effect of deception detection on ToM through EF, abcs = .13, BCa 95% CI [.05, .24] with EF accounting for roughly half of the total effect, PM = .49. See Figure 1 for the full model. These findings support the conclusion that children rely on their EF to help them act on their growing knowledge of deception to facilitate a better conceptual understanding of mental states (ToM). For example, once a child understands the concept of deception, s/he is better able to be successful at detecting deception when s/he can keep all relevant details of the scenario in working memory and inhibit an initial reaction to the deception in order to respond to the deception in a more appropriate manner. Furthermore, the child’s response to the deception along with the deceiver’s subsequent response provides more examples of diverse/contradictory mental states to expand ToM. Overall, this study increases the extant literature exploring deception detection, a skill of which there is currently a dearth of research (Eskritt & Lee, 2017), and better informs the literature investigating how EF relate to ToM more broadly.

Authors

• Carmen Brown Farrell, University of Alabama
  Presenting Author

• Ansley Gilpin, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alexandra Nancarrow, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rebecca Bauer, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author