Young children’s emerging ability to make false statements

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YOUNG CHILDREN’S EMERGING ABILITY TO MAKE FALSE STATEMENTS
by
Elizabeth Carole Ahern

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(PSYCHOLOGY)

May 2010

Copyright 2010 Elizabeth Carole Ahern
ii
Dedication
I dedicate this work to my mother and father.

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Table of Contents
Dedication ii
List of Tables iv
Abstract v
Introduction 1
Method 7
Results 9
Discussion 11
Bibliography 16

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List of Tables
Table 1: Mean Scores and Standard Deviations on Children’s 19
False Statement Performance

Table 2: Percentage (Number) of Children at Ceiling in Making 20
False Statements by Question-Type

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Abstract
This study examined the origins of children’s ability to make consciously false
statements, a necessary component of lying. Children aged 2 to 5 years were rewarded for
claiming that they see a picture of a bird when viewing pictures of fish. They were asked
outcome questions (“do you win/lose?”), recognition questions (“do you have a
bird/fish?”), and recall questions (“what do you have?”), which were hypothesized to
vary in difficulty depending on the need for consciousness of falsity (less for outcome
questions) and self-generation of an appropriate response (more for recall questions).
The youngest children (2 ½ to 3 ½) were above chance on outcome questions, but it was
not until 3 ½ that children performed above chance on recognition questions or were
capable of maintaining false claims across question-types. Findings have implications for
understanding the emergence of deception in young children, and for the courts’
assessment of child witness competency and credibility.

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Introduction
Although children’s honesty has long been a subject of scientific interest, little
research has examined the emergence of children’s lie-telling ability. A lie is a
consciously false statement that is intended to deceive (Stern & Stern, 1909). Most
research has focused on the extent to which children’s false statements are intended to
deceive (Carlson, Moses, & Hix, 1998; Chandler, Fritz, & Hala, 1989; Hala, Chandler, &
Fritz, 1991; Lewis, Stanger, & Sullivan, 1989; Newton, Reddy, & Bull, 2000; Peskin,
1992; Ruffman, Olson, Ash, & Keenan, 1993; Sodian, 1991; Talwar, & Lee, 2002a), with
much less attention devoted to identifying the age at which young children are capable of
making consciously false statements, a necessary precursor to lying.
Children’s capacity and inclination to lie is also of continuing interest to the
courts. Since at least the late 17th century (R. vs. Arrowsmith, 1678), child witnesses
have been routinely asked about their understanding of the meaning and morality of lying
in order to determine if they are competent to take the oath. In fact, until the 1970s,
children were presumed incompetent, and their competency had to be demonstrated prior
to their testimony being admitted. Although the lifting of formal competency
requirements has led some commentators to assert that the competency requirement is
dead (Bruck, Ceci, & Hembrooke, 1998; Goodman & Reed, 1986), its death has been
exaggerated: In most states, witnesses still either take the oath or make some affirmation
that they will tell the truth (Mueller & Kirkpatrick, 2003). This, in turn, leads many
attorneys and judges to continue to inquire into children’s understanding of truth and lies
(Myers, 2005). Moreover, forensic investigators are often advised to ask competency

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questions in their pre-trial interviews (Poole & Lamb, 1998), even in countries (such as
the United Kingdom) where questions about the truth and lies are clearly not a
prerequisite to testimony (Crown Prosecution Service, 2002).
There are hints in the literature on children’s lies that significant developmental
changes occur from 3 to 4 years of age. Parents and teachers, for example, have reported
noticing the first “lies” in children at about this age (Newton, 1994, cited in Newton,
Reddy, & Bull, 2000; Stouthamer-Loeber, 1986). Also, in laboratory research utilizing a
“temptation resistance” paradigm (in which a child is asked not to peek at or play with a
toy, inevitably does so, and then is asked if he or she peeked when the researcher
returns), substantial increases in false statements emerge between 3 and 4 years of age
(Lewis et al., 1989; Polak & Harris, 1999; Talwar & Lee, 2002a; Talwar, Lee, Bala, &
Lindsay, 2002). At the same time, naturalistic studies have claimed lying is common
among 2 year olds (Newton, Reddy, & Bull, 2000; Wilson, Smith, & Ross, 2003), and
some work has found near universal false denials of wrongdoing among 3 year old
children (Talwar and Lee, 2002b).
Stern and Stern’s (1909) classic observational work led them to postulate that
many examples of early “lying” are in fact “pseudo-lies,” which are “mistaken claims” or
“momentary impulsive utterances.” Although Stern and Stern did not elaborate on the
meaning of “mistaken” and “impulsive” claims, these sorts of statements can be said to
lie upon a continuum of falsity awareness. When a false statement is a mistake, the
speaker believes the statement to be true and is ignorant of its falsity. When a false
statement is impulsive, the speaker may be inattentive to the statement’s falsity.

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Elaborating on Stern & Stern, we postulate that many false statements made by
young children labeled as lies are best understood as impulsive false statements in which
the child’s attention while speaking is focused on desires rather than beliefs. In other
words, it is important to distinguish between “desire-based” and “belief-based”
responses. Desire-based responses are made in accord with the child’s desires. False
desire-based responses need not be “mistakes” or “lies” because the child may be
inattentive to, rather than ignorant of, the truth of his or her response. In contrast, belief-
based responses are made in accord with the child’s beliefs. A false belief-based
response is either mistakenly or consciously false.
We posit that the likelihood of a child providing desire-based responses rather
than belief-based responses depends on the nature of the question asked. First, if
questions refer to desirability rather than factuality, desire-based responses are more
likely. Second, if questions permit the child to accept or reject stated information rather
than require the child to independently generate responses, desire-based responses are
more likely. Third, if questions refer to something not immediately perceived, this
facilitates desire-based responding. In each case, the underlying principle is that desire-
based responses are facilitated when the child is not directly confronted with the truth.
The way in which children’s false statements might be desire-based is particularly
easy to imagine when considering simple denials of prior wrongdoing. When the child
responds “no” to a question such as “did you peek at the toy” the child may be
responding on the basis of desirability rather than on his memory of his interaction with
the toy. Research on children’s early use of the word “no” has found that it first emerges

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as a reflection of the child’s desires rather than as a negation of a factual assertion
(Hummer, Wimmer, & Antes, 1993; Pea, 1980). Hence, a “no” response could be
interpreted as “I wish I hadn’t peeked” rather than “I didn’t peek.”
One laboratory study examining young children’s lies considered the possibility
that children’s false statements were mistakes but not the possibility that their false
statements were desire-based. Polak and Harris (1999) recognized that prior research on
children’s lying failed to acknowledge that children who falsely denied having peeked
may not have recalled whether they had peeked. The researchers thus compared
children’s willingness to state that they had touched a guitar in the experimenter’s
absence when either encouraged or forbidden to touch. Children encouraged to touch
universally admitted having done so, whereas a substantial percentage of children who
were told not to touch denied touching. However, because the instructions differed in the
two groups, touching was less desirable for children who had been forbidden to touch
than for children who were encouraged to touch. Children who responded with reference
to the experimenter’s description of the desirability of action (“it’s ok to touch” vs. “do
not touch”) rather than their memory of their interaction with the target object would tell
the truth when encouraged to touch, and would make false statements when forbidden to
touch.
In the temptation resistance studies, children’s lie-telling capabilities may be
over-estimated, in part, due to the fact that children were asked to recall their actions
(whether they had seen the toy) rather than directly confronted with a perceptible truth.
Research on children’s pretense abilities and inhibition supports the assertion that

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immediate perceptions inhibit false statements. Young children find it easier to employ
pretense language when using an object that that has an ambiguous function or identity
(e.g., block = cake) than when using an object that is notably different from its pretended-
identity (e.g., toothbrush = comb) (Bretherton, O’Connell, Shore & Bates, 1984;
McLoyd, 1983; Ungerer, Zelazo, Kearsley & O’Leary, 1981). Similarly, research on
children’s inhibitory abilities has shown that young children are quite good at learning to
say “sun” to an abstract stimulus (Gerstadt, Hong & Diamond, 1994) but have
considerable difficulty in learning to say “sun” to a picture of a moon (Diamond,
Kirkham & Amso, 2002). We are aware of only one study in which young children
appeared to successfully lie in the face of a conflicting perception. Examining the
development of white lies, Talwar and Lee (2002b) devised a clever procedure in which
the experimenter, who had an unsightly spot on her nose, asked the child if she looked
“okay” for her picture. 85% of the 3-year-olds falsely said “yes.” However, the target
question did not directly address the child’s perceptions. That is, the experimenter did
not ask the child “do I have a spot on my nose?”
Surprisingly, research on lying has largely ignored the effect of different question-
types on children’s performance. As we have emphasized, questions vary in the extent
to which they focus on desirability or truth. Moreover, Newton et al. (2000) emphasized
the importance of considering if “linguistically simple forms or specific phrases” were
“repeated in a routine manner rather than varied” in order to determine whether
children’s false statements are indeed lies (p. 309). Research on children’s early lies has
tended to ask yes/no questions in which a successful lie is a simple “yes” or “no” (Lewis,

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et al., 1989; Polak & Harris, 1999; Talwar & Lee, 2002a), but these questions are more
subject to “yes” or “no” biases and random responding than recall questions (Fritzley &
Lee, 2003; Peterson, Dowden & Tobin, 1999), and do not require the child to generate
details in order to produce a false response.
Our goal in this research was to examine children’s early ability to make
consciously false statements. We were especially interested in the types of false
statements children can first provide and the extent to which they can modify their
responses to different questions in order to maintain a falsehood. We taught 2- to 5-year-
olds a game in which they earned prizes for claiming that they “had a bird” when viewing
pictures of fish. They were asked outcome questions (“do you lose/win?”), recognition
questions (“do you have a bird/fish?”), and recall questions (“what do you have?”).
Finally, we included control recognition questions (“do you have a cow?”) and trials in
which children were actually viewing a bird to identify task incomprehension and
potential yes biases.
We first hypothesized that the earliest signs of good performance would emerge
in response to the outcome questions because children could succeed by referencing the
desirability of “winning” rather than the actual stimulus. Second, we expected children to
perform better on the recognition than recall questions because “yes/no” responses are
simpler to generate than a false statement. Third, based on evidence that children’s lie-
telling abilities improve substantially between 3 and 4 years of age, we tentatively
predicted that consistently good performance would emerge during this period.

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Method
Participants
The sample consisted of 158 2-7 to 5-7 year olds (M = 49 months, sd = 8.5)
from middle-class neighborhoods in two counties in the Southwestern United States
(57% male). The ethnic breakdown of the sample was 56% Caucasian, 13% Asian, 10%
Latino, 3% African American, and 18% biracial, other, or unknown.
Materials & Procedure
Children were individually brought to a quiet area of their pre-school where the
experimenter obtained their assent to participate. Children completed several tasks during
their participation, including that described here, which was administered first or last
(task completion order did not affect the results and is not discussed further).
Training phase. The experimenter introduced the task by stating, “In this game,
always say you have a bird. Because if you say you have a bird, you win and you get a
prize!” The experimenter then placed a coin into a box that was in front of the child.
“But if you don’t say you have a bird, you lose and I take away your prize!” The
experimenter then removed the coin from the child’s box. Each child was first trained to
provide the appropriate response to the recall (“what do you have?”) and recognition
questions (“do you have a bird/fish?”) without bird or fish stimuli present. The child was
asked each question up to three times, and if the child failed three times to provide the
appropriate response, the experimenter told the child the appropriate answer and
rehearsed the answer with the child. Each child was then given four trials with fish
stimuli and two trials with the bird stimuli present and asked the recognition and recall

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questions. If the child responded to a yes/no question without a yes/no answer (e.g., the
child responded, “bird” to “do you have a fish?”), the question was repeated and the child
was then prompted to say “yes” or “no”. At the end of each practice trial the
experimenter reiterated “always say you have a bird.”
Testing phase. The experimenter reiterated the game rule and reminded the child
to say she had a bird “even if [she had] a fish” at the outset of the testing phase. For the
test, the child was shown three blocks of six fish pictures and one block of six bird
pictures, with the order of the block of bird pictures’ presentation being counterbalanced
across children. One question corresponded to each picture and included outcome
questions (“do you win/lose?”), recognition questions (“do you have a bird/fish?”), recall
questions (“what do you have?”) and control recognition questions (“do you have a
cow?”). Children received responses of praise or disappointment from the experimenter
based on their success of claiming to have a bird.
The questions asked were administered in a fixed order so that questions varied
across trials but complementary questions were not asked consecutively. Thus, for
example, “Do you win?” was never immediately followed by “Do you lose?” Yes/no
prompts were given for outcome questions (“do you win/lose?”) if the child answered
with an animal response (“bird”). If a child was not responsive to a particular question,
the experimenter asked the child, “Tell me what you think.” If the child remained
unresponsive the experimenter repeated the question once before moving to the next trial.
Coding. Children’s final answers were coded to generate proportion scores,
with higher proportions reflecting success in making false statements. Children were

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given one point for each answer that suggested that they had a bird (except for “bird”
responses to the outcome questions, which were treated as incorrect), and zero for each
answer that suggested they did not have a bird or that indicated they had a fish. Children
received a “.5” for each “don’t know” or incomprehensible response so that a failure to
answer would reflect chance responding; only 2% of the responses were coded as .5.
Correct answers to the control recognition questions (i.e., “no” responses to “do you have
a cow?”) received a score of “1” to measure yes-bias.
Results
Children’s mean performance across the three fish trials is shown in Table 1
(higher scores reflect success in making false statements). For the outcome and
recognition questions, children’s responses could be compared to chance responding;
whereas even the youngest children were above chance on the outcome questions,
children were not above chance on the recognition questions until 3-7 to 4-5. The oldest
age group was near-ceiling across the three question-types.
To examine age and question-type differences, a mixed model analysis of
covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted on children’s responses. Age (2-7 to 3-6; 3-7 to 4-
6; 4-7 to 5-7) was entered as a between-subjects factor and question-type (outcome,
recognition, recall) was entered as a within-subjects factor. Children’s responses to the
control recognition question were covaried to control for the effects of a yes-bias. There
were main effects of age, F (2, 154) = 8.81, p <.001, η
p
2
=.103 and question-type, F (2,
308) = 26.06, p <.001, η
p
2
= .145, and age interacted with question-type, F (4, 308) =
2.38, p =.052, η
p
2
= .03. There was also a main effect due to the covariate, F (1, 154) =

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10.96, p = .001, η
p
2
= .066 and the covariate interacted with question-type, F (2, 308) =
13.17, p <.001, η
p
2
=.079.
Examination of the means in Table 1 revealed that the age X question-type
interaction was attributable to the fact that the younger two groups of children performed
better on the outcome than recognition questions, and better on the recognition than recall
questions. Moreover, age improvements were evident between the youngest and the
middle age group for each question-type, whereas children continued to perform more
proficiently on the recall questions across age. In other words, the recall questions
appeared to be most difficult, and exhibited continued improvement with age. The
covariate effect and its interaction with question-type was attributable to the fact that
children with lower scores on the control recognition questions (evincing a “yes” bias)
performed worse on the task, particularly on the recall and recognition questions.
To pinpoint the age at which children exhibited the largest improvement in
performance, we examined children between 3-1 and 4-0 by dividing them into four
three-month age groups. Performance on the recognition questions increased from 52%
(sd = .26) among children 3-4 to 3-6 to 77% (sd = .23) among children 3-7 to 3-9; the
latter percentage is significantly above chance, t (13) = 4.41, p =.001. Similarly,
performance on the recall questions increased from 41% (sd = .41) to 65% (sd =.34)
during this age interval.
To determine if age differences in performance were merely due to task
incomprehension among the younger children, we separately analyzed children who
provided accurate answers to the three question-types when presented with the bird

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stimuli (desire-based n = 117, recognition n = 117, recall n =145). We then conducted
separate univariate ANCOVAs for each question-type with age as a between subjects
factor with “yes” bias as a covariate (outcome n = 117, recognition n = 117, recall n
=145). No significant age differences emerged for the outcome questions, F (2, 113) =
0.251, p =.779, but age-related improvements were still evident between the youngest
two age groups for the recognition, F (2, 113) = 5.612, p = .005, η
p
2
= .09, and recall
questions, F (2, 141) = 8.057, p < .001, η
p
2
= .101.
Finally, individual patterns of responding were examined. Of interest was the
number of children at ceiling on each question-type (Table 2). Only one child (2%)
under 3-7 answered all questions appropriately across question-types, compared to 31%
of children between 3-7 and 4-6, and 50% of children between 4-7 and 5-7.
Discussion
In the current study, we examined young children’s emerging ability to make
consciously false statements, a necessary precursor to lying. We taught children a game
in which they won prizes for claiming that every stimuli they saw was a bird. Unlike in
prior research examining incipient lies, we asked children about currently perceptible
stimuli to ensure that they were aware of and attentive to the truth. We further varied
whether the questions directly referenced the truth in order to determine if question-type
affected children’s performance. We tentatively predicted that good performance on the
tasks would emerge between 3 and 4 years of age.
Our hypotheses were largely supported. For one, children were most adept at
making false statements when the question addressed the desirability of winning (the

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outcome questions) rather than the children’s immediate perception (the recognition and
recall questions). Indeed, when we excluded children who may not have fully understood
the questions (children who failed to assert winning when they really had won), there
were no age differences in performance on the outcome questions. Moreover, a
substantial number of children began to exhibit consistently good performance in the 3-6
to 4-6 age range, with the most notable improvement at 3-7 to 3-9 years of age.
There was also some support for our prediction that children would perform better
on the recognition (“do you have a bird/fish?”) than recall (“what do you have?”)
questions, based on the notion that yes/no responses are simpler to generate than false
labels. However, virtually none of the youngest children was capable of consistently
responding appropriately to the recognition questions (2%), whereas a fair number were
capable of consistently answering “bird” to the recall questions (17%) (Table 2). The
recognition questions’ difficulty may have been due to the need for flexibility in
responding; children had to alternate between “yes” and “no” responses. In contrast, the
appropriate recall response never varied. Additionally, children were administered six
recognition trials compared to only three recall trials, which may have promoted ceiling
performance on the recall questions. Clearer differences between recognition and recall
questions are likely to emerge when children must generate their own false response to
the recall questions rather than repeat one provided by the experimenter. Analogously,
research examining children’s lies in the temptation resistance paradigm has shown that
many children who were capable of uttering a simple lie about peeking (“no”) leaked the

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fact that they had peeked when asked to identify the toy (because knowledge of the toy’s
identity proved that they had in fact peeked) (Talwar & Lee, 2002a)
The difficulty 3- and 4-year-olds had in providing false responses across question-
types on this task suggests that research on children’s lies should consider the importance
of question-type and the perceptibility of the truth in influencing children’s honesty.
False denials elicited from young children in temptation resistance studies may include
impulsive utterances rather than conscious assertions about their prior actions. Young
children may be capable of uttering a simple “no” but incapable of maintaining a lie over
multiple questions or generating false information about their actions. Future work
should manipulate both the perceptibility of the truth and the type of question the child is
asked. For example, we would predict that children lie less if peeking entailed opening a
window that could not be closed, thus making the transgression immediately perceptible
when the question was asked. Similarly, with respect to question-type, we suspect that
many 3-year-olds who answer “yes” when asked “do I look okay for my picture” will
answer honestly if asked “do I have a red spot on my nose?” (Talwar & Lee, 2002a).
Exploration of these issues will provide a richer description of the emergence of
children’s lying abilities.
Although we have emphasized ways in which prior research may have
exaggerated young children’s tendency to make false statements, it is also possible that
children in some studies were insufficiently motivated to perform well on the tasks. We
trained children to make false statements and consistently and explicitly rewarded them
for doing so. Despite the large number of trials, children’s performance remained stable

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during the task. In contrast, research on children’s inhibitory abilities (in which they are
instructed to say “night” in response to a sun and “day” in response to a moon) often
finds decrements in performance over trials (Gerstadt, et al., 1994). In the temptation
resistance studies, the younger children who admitted peeking may have been unwilling
rather than unable to lie. Research on children’s early ability to negate false statements
suggests that children develop compunctions against making false statements at a very
young age (Lyon, Carrick, & Quas, in press). Intent to deceive may also play a role, such
that children become more aware of their ability to deceive, they may be more inclined to
lie because of their greater faith in its success.
The fact that young children’s capacity to make false statements is dependent on
the children’s desires and interviewer’s questions has implications for legal practice. If
children’s early lies are largely desire-based, then the desirability of the reported event
should be considered in assessing the child’s credibility. Moreover, young children’s
narratives are less likely to be the product of deliberate deception if they are elicited
through interviewing approaches that require the child to generate the forensically
relevant information.
In closing, this study found that children exhibit substantial improvement in their
ability to make false statements from three to four years of age. Although children as
young as 2 ½ were proficient at making false statements that did not contradict the child’s
immediate perception, it was not until children were over 3 ½ years of age that they
appeared capable of maintaining a false claim across different types of questions. These

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results suggest that although lying appears to emerge very early, preschool children are
not necessarily proficient at producing full-fledged lies.

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Table 1.
Mean Scores and Standard Deviations on Children’s False Statement Performance
Age
2-7 to 3-6 3-7 to 4-6 4-7 to 5-7
Mean (SD)
Question
Desire-based
Do you win/lose?
.67 (.27)
a

a
* .83 (.25)
b
a
*

.84 (.28)
b
*

Recognition
Do you have a bird/fish?
.53 (.23)
a
b
.79 (.27)
b
b
*

.85 (.29)
b
*

Recall
What do you have?
.35 (.39)
a
c
.73 (.36)
b
c

.87 (.29)
c
Note. Different superscripts within each question denote significant differences between
age groups, and different subscripts denote significant differences across questions within
each age group. Significance level was set at alpha = .05.

20

20

Table 2.
Percentage (Number) of Children at Ceiling in Making False Statements by Question-
Type
Age
2-7 to 3-6 3-7 to 4-6 4-7 to 5-7
% (Number)
Question
Desire-based
Do you win/lose?
29% (12) 54% (38) 63% (29)
Recognition
Do you have a bird/fish?
2% (1) 47% (33) 63% (29)
Recall
What do you have?
17% (7) 55% (39) 78% (36)
All questions 2% (1) 31% (23) 50% (43)

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This study examined the origins of children’s ability to make consciously false statements, a necessary component of lying. Children aged 2 to 5 years were rewarded for claiming that they see a picture of a bird when viewing pictures of fish. They were asked outcome questions (“do you win/lose?”), recognition questions (“do you have a bird/fish?”), and recall questions (“what do you have?”), which were hypothesized to vary in difficulty depending on the need for consciousness of falsity (less for outcome questions) and self-generation of an appropriate response (more for recall questions). The youngest children (2 ½ to 3 ½) were above chance on outcome questions, but it was not until 3 ½ that children performed above chance on recognition questions or were capable of maintaining false claims across question-types. Findings have implications for understanding the emergence of deception in young children, and for the courts’ assessment of child witness competency and credibility.

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Ahern, Elizabeth Carole (author)

Core Title Young children’s emerging ability to make false statements

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Psychology

Degree Conferral Date 2010-05

Publication Date 01/19/2010

Defense Date 09/30/2009

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Children,cognition,inhibition,Lying,OAI-PMH Harvest,Preschool

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Lyon, Thomas (committee chair), Farver, Jo Ann M. (committee member), Manis, Franklin R. (committee member)

Creator Email eahern@law.usc.edu,ecahern@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2804

Unique identifier UC1415972

Identifier etd-Ahern-3410 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-289019 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2804 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Ahern-3410.pdf

Dmrecord 289019

Document Type Thesis

Rights Ahern, Elizabeth Carole

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu