To lie or not to lie? The influence of parenting and theory-of-mind understanding on three-year-old children’s honesty

Ma, Fengling; Evans, Angela; Liu, Ying; Xiuzhi, Luo; Xu, Fu-Liu

doi:10.1080/03057240.2015.1023182

Cited by 58 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…As in previous experimental studies with preschool-aged children that used the TRP (e.g., Ding et al, 2015;Evans & Lee, 2013;Ma et al, 2015;Williams et al, 2017), most of the children peeked at the 'forbidden' toy during the TRP. The contribution of inhibitory control and working memory to children's lie-telling behaviours was also examined.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Ma et al (2015) found that close to half of the children, in their study, successfully responded to a question assessing knowledge ignorance (i.e., the understanding that another person may not know what is true). Ma et al (2015) found that close to half of the children, in their study, successfully responded to a question assessing knowledge ignorance (i.e., the understanding that another person may not know what is true).…”

Section: Development Of Lie-telling Behavioursmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Despite the observational and anecdotal evidence that children's lie-telling behaviours may emerge as young as 2.5 years of age (Darwin, 1877;Newton et al, 2000;Wilson, Smith, & Ross, 2003), very few researchers have examined lie-telling in children below 4 years of age (Ding et al, 2015;Evans & Lee, 2013;Ma, Evans, Liu, Luo, & Xu, 2015;Williams et al, 2017), and no researchers have examined the role of ToM in relation to children's lie-telling prior to 3 years of age. Consequently, the role of ToM in the early period of Talwar and Lee's (2008) primary stage remains relatively unknown.…”

Section: Development Of Lie-telling Behavioursmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The contributions of mental state understanding and executive functioning to preschool‐aged children's lie‐telling

Leduc

Williams

Gómez-Garibello

et al. 2016

British J of Dev Psycho

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In this study, preschool-aged children's lie-telling behaviour was examined in relation to mental state understanding and executive functioning. Sixty-seven children aged between 25 and 43 months (M = 34.80, SD = 4.39) participated in a temptation resistance paradigm (TRP). Children completed emerging ToM tasks measuring the following mental states: (1) diverse beliefs, (2) diverse desires, and (3) knowledge access. Children also completed measures of inhibitory control and working memory. In total, 63 of the 67 children peeked at the toy during the TRP, and a total of 26 of those children denied their transgression to the research assistant. Inhibitory control and understanding of knowledge access predicted lie-telling behaviour. Results are discussed in relation to a developmental model of children's lie-telling behaviour. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? The relationship between lie-telling, executive functioning, and ToM has been established in older children (aged 4 and above). Inhibitory control plays a role in young children's lie-telling (aged 2-4). Children above 3 years of age have some understanding of mental states. What does this study add? Very young children (2-3-year-olds) also possess an understanding of mental states. Mental state understanding is related to 2-3-year-old children's lie-telling behaviours and may be more predictive than inhibitory control. While the results were not significant, this study is the first to look at the unique role of working memory in very young children's lie-telling.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Development Of Lie-telling Behavioursmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Development Of Lie-telling Behavioursmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The contributions of mental state understanding and executive functioning to preschool‐aged children's lie‐telling

Leduc

Williams

Gómez-Garibello

et al. 2016

British J of Dev Psycho

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Similarly, Talwar and Lee (2008) found that children's successful antisocial lying during a temptation resistance paradigm was significantly correlated with their first-order false belief understanding (i.e., ability to make attributions about others' thoughts or false beliefs). Similarly, Ma, Evans, Liu, Luo, and Xu (2015) found that very young children who told antisocial lies were also more likely to pass pre-theory of mind tasks (i.e., knowledge-ignorance) compared with their truthful counterparts. Semantic leakage control, the ability to effectively maintain a lie, was also related to second-order false belief understanding (i.e., the ability to make attributions about what one person's thoughts or false beliefs are about another person's thoughts or false beliefs).…”

Section: Theory Of Mindmentioning

confidence: 94%

The role of executive functions and theory of mind in children’s prosocial lie-telling

Williams

Moore

Crossman

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…But in the last decade, researchers have shown that children’s ToM understanding significantly correlates with their verbal deception in the preschool years for Western (Evans & Lee, 2013; Talwar & Lee, 2008) and Chinese children (Evans, Xu, & Lee, 2011; Ma, Evans, Liu, Luo, & Xu, 2015). Because ToM is typically thought of as contributing to prosocial development, one might surmise that improving ToM ability should potentially reduce children’s tendency to lie.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory-of-Mind Training Causes Honest Young Children to Lie

et al. 2015

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Theory of mind (ToM) has long been recognized to play a major role in children’s social functioning. However, no direct evidence confirms the causal linkage between the two. Here we addressed this significant gap by examining whether ToM causes the emergence of lying, an important social skill. We showed that after participating in ToM training to learn about mental state concepts, 3-year-olds who originally had been unable to lie began to deceive consistently. This training effect lasted for more than a month. In contrast, 3-year-olds who participated in control training to learn about physical concepts were significantly less inclined to lie than the ToM trained children. These findings provide the first experimental evidence supporting the causal role of ToM in the development of social competence in early childhood.

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To lie or not to lie? The influence of parenting and theory-of-mind understanding on three-year-old children’s honesty

Cited by 58 publications

References 41 publications

The contributions of mental state understanding and executive functioning to preschool‐aged children's lie‐telling

The contributions of mental state understanding and executive functioning to preschool‐aged children's lie‐telling

The role of executive functions and theory of mind in children’s prosocial lie-telling

Theory-of-Mind Training Causes Honest Young Children to Lie

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