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The Modified Temptation Resistance Task: A Paradigm to Elicit Children's Strategic Lie-telling
Published on: April 6, 2018
Optimistic expectations about communication explain children's difficulties in hiding, lying, and mistrusting liars
Olivier Mascaro1, Olivier Morin2, Dan Sperber3
1Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod (CNRS UMR5304/Université de Lyon);Central European University,Budapest;Jean Nicod Institute (CNRS UMR8129),Paris.
Abstract:
We suggest that preschoolers' frequent obliviousness to the risks and opportunities of deception comes from a trusting stance supporting verbal communication. Three studies (N = 125) confirm this hypothesis. Three-year-olds can hide information from others (Study 1) and they can lie (Study 2) in simple settings. Yet when one introduces the possibility of informing others in the very same settings, three-year-olds tend to be honest (Studies 1 and 2). Similarly, four-year-olds, though capable of treating assertions as false, trust deceptive informants (Study 3). We suggest that children's reduced sensitivity to the opportunities of lying, and to the risks of being lied to might help explain their difficulties on standard false belief tasks.
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