Children's Understanding of Epistemic Conduct in Self-Deception and Other False Belief Stories

Johnson, Edward A.

doi:10.2307/1132295

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Experimental studies suggest that children develop a marked increase in the deployment and understanding of deceptive strategies between the ages of 3 and 5 years (Blaskewitz, Merten, & Kathmann, 2008;Constantinou & McCaffrey, 2003;Johnson, 1997;Lewis, Stanger, & Sullivan, 1989;Nagle, Everhart, Durham, McCammon, & Walker, 2006;Newton, Reddy, & Bull, 2000;Polak & Harris, 1999). Lewis and colleagues studied deception in children by asking 3-year-olds not to look at a toy when left alone in a room and later questioned them about whether they had looked.…”

Section: Development Of Deception In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although children have the capacity to deceive around the age of 2 or 3 years, the ability to intentionally deceive and sustain a false belief generally does not arise until approximately the age of 6 and improves with age due to improved cognitive sophistication, inhibitory control, and theory of mind (Johnson, 1997;Talwar, Gordon, & Lee, 2007). Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others and to realize the difference between the two.…”

Section: Development Of Deception In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessment of effort in children: A systematic review

DeRight

Carone

2013

Child Neuropsychology

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The assessment of response validity is now considered an important and necessary component of neuropsychological evaluations. One way for assessing response validity is with performance validity tests (PVTs), which measure the degree of effort applied to testing to achieve optimal performance. Numerous studies have shown that normal and neurologically impaired children are capable of passing certain free-standing PVTs using adult cutoffs. Despite this, PVT use appears to be more common in adults compared to children. The overall purpose of this systematic review is to provide the reader with a general overview of the existing literature on PVTs in children. As part of this review, goals are to inform the reader why PVT use is not as prevalent in children compared to adults, to discuss why PVTs and related methods are important in pediatric cognitive evaluations, and to discuss practical limitations and future directions.

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Section: Development Of Deception In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Development Of Deception In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of effort in children: A systematic review

DeRight

Carone

2013

Child Neuropsychology

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“…During these early years, acts of deception are driven primarily by a desire to avoid situation-specific punishment or negative emotional states such as guilt or shame after a misdeed, rather than a preplanned attempt to instill a false belief in another (Polak & Harris, 1999;Talwar, Gordon, & Lee, 2007). The capacity to intentionally deceive and maintain that consistent false belief over time is thought to develop by 7 or 8 years old in most children (Johnson, 1997;Talwar et al, 2007). Throughout later childhood and into adolescence, more advanced skills that can lend credibility to deceptive acts continue to emerge (e.g., the capacity to hold multiple disparate beliefs in mind, the ability to convey a consistent semantic message, greater appreciation of others' perspectives).…”

Section: Pediatric Noncredible Effort 605mentioning

confidence: 99%

Noncredible Effort during Pediatric Neuropsychological Exam: A Case Series and Literature Review

Kirkwood

Kirk

Blaha

et al. 2010

Child Neuropsychology

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Neuropsychological test interpretation rests upon the assumption that the examinee has exerted full effort. If an individual provides inadequate effort during exam, the resulting data will be invalid and represent an underestimate of the person's true abilities. Although youth have been assumed historically to be less capable of deception than adults, acts of deception in childhood are not uncommon, even in normative populations. Yet, very few cases of children who have provided suboptimal effort during neuropsychological exam have appeared in the scientific literature. We present six clinical cases illustrating that children down to at least age 8 years can present with noncredible performance. The cases include those in which clear external incentives could be identified to those in which intrinsic or psychological factors were presumed to predominate. The fairly diverse nature of the presented cases, along with other recent work, suggests that suboptimal effort in children is apt to occur more frequently than previously recognized, even if it might occur less often than in comparable adult samples. In most of the presented cases, noncredible performance would not have been detected definitively by clinical judgment alone, reinforcing the value of routinely incorporating symptom validity tests into the neuropsychological assessment of school-aged children. The number of effort tests that have demonstrated utility in children pales in comparison to those available to the adult practitioner, although recent research now supports the use of several standalone measures with pediatric patients.

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“…Research suggests that children come to understand the culpability of selfdeceivers for their false beliefs at about age 8 or 9, at the end of a developmental sequence that progresses from an understanding of their own and others' false beliefs to the blameworthiness of other-deception, and culminates in an appreciation of the blameworthiness of self-deception ( Johnson 1996). What conception of the mind does it presuppose?…”

Section: Real Ascriptions Of Self-deception Are Fallible Moral Judgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking and believing in self-deception

Bach¹

1997

Behav Brain Sci

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Self-deception is made unnecessarily puzzling by the assumption that it is an intrapersonal analog of ordinary interpersonal deception. In paradigmatic cases, interpersonal deception is intentional and involves some time at which the deceiver disbelieves what the deceived believes. The assumption that self-deception is intentional and that the self-deceiver believes that some proposition is true while also believing that it is false produces interesting conceptual puzzles, but it also produces a fundamentally mistaken view of the dynamics of self-deception. This target article challenges the assumption and presents an alternative view of the nature and etiology of selfdeception. Drawing upon empirical studies of cognitive biases, it resolves familiar "paradoxes" about the dynamics of self-deception and the condition of being self-deceived. Conceptually sufficient conditions for self-deception are offered and putative empirical demonstrations of a kind of self-deception in which a subject believes that a proposition is true while also believing that it is false are criticized. Selfdeception is neither irresolvably paradoxical nor mysterious, and it is explicable without the assistance of mental exotica. The key to understanding its dynamics is a proper appreciation of our capacity for acquiring and retaining motivationally biased beliefs.

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Children's Understanding of Epistemic Conduct in Self-Deception and Other False Belief Stories

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Assessment of effort in children: A systematic review

Assessment of effort in children: A systematic review

Noncredible Effort during Pediatric Neuropsychological Exam: A Case Series and Literature Review

Thinking and believing in self-deception

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