While the majority of developmental deception research has examined the truth- and lie-telling behaviours of younger children (3 to 8 years of age), the development of deceptive behaviours in older children and adolescents has mainly been ignored, despite the fact that this age group appears more frequently in forensic settings. The general goal of this dissertation was to examine deceptive behaviours in 8- to 16-year-olds including the development of lie-telling behaviours and the ability to detect their lies.
The investigation began by examining the influence of promising to tell the truth and moral competency tests on the veracity of 8- to 16-year-olds statements. Consistent with previous findings with younger children (Lyon et al., 2008; Talwar et al., 2002), 8- to 16-year-olds were significantly more likely to tell the truth after promising. Additionally, asking children to complete a competency test did not influence the veracity of children’s statements alone.
Next, building on previous findings with 3- to 7-year-olds (Talwar & Lee, 2008) the relation between concealing a transgression through verbal deception and cognitive development was examined in 8- to 16-year-olds. Consistent with previous findings with younger children (Talwar & Lee, 2008), these results indicate that both working memory and inhibitory control are related to the sophistication of lies. In addition, the present study demonstrates that 8- to 16-year-olds planning ability is also related to the sophistication of their lies.
Finally, the ability to detect 8- to 16-year-olds lies was examined. Overall, detection rates were around chance levels for both parents and 8- to 17-year-olds. However, consistent with findings with younger children (Leach et al., 2004), parents’ rates were significantly above chance for detecting lies after the speaker had promised to tell the truth.
Overall, these results demonstrate that while 8- to 16-year-olds show similar patterns of deception as younger children, developments during this period resulted in additional findings calling for the examination of this older population.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/19143 |
| Date | 25 February 2010 |
| Creators | Evans, Angela |
| Contributors | Lee, Kang |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0015 seconds