Social and Cognitive Influences of Childrens Lying Behavior - Essay Example

RUNNING HEAD: CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL AND COGNITIVE INFLUENCES ON CHILDREN’S LIE-AND-TRUTH TELLING Critical Analysis of the Social and Cognitive Influences on Children’s Lie-And-Truth Telling Name Institution Date Introduction Lying is a familiar social phenomenon that occurs commonly in various social situations for a large number of purposes. According to Talwar & Lee (2008), lie-and truth-telling behaviour among children has in, recent years, received significant attention from developmental psychologists owing to its theoretical implications in understanding children’s social-cognitive development, as well as its practical applications in clinical, legal and educational situations. As highlighted by Itakura & Fujita (2008), a large number of existing studies on children’s lie-and-truth telling behaviour have focused on children’s understanding as well as the moral evaluation of lies. These studies have confirmed that children demonstrate undeveloped conceptual as well moral understanding of telling lies at roughly the age of 3 years, but take at least a decade to get to maturity. On the other hand, only a few studies have explored children’s actual lie- and truth-telling behaviour, with majority of which focusing on pre-school children. In general, these studies have confirmed that lie- and truth-telling behaviour become known during the pre-school days and that a large number of children normally lie to others early in their lives. This particular paper therefore intends critically examine the social and cognitive influences on children’s lie-and-truth telling. According to Ceci et.al (2013), it has been hypothesize that many younger children do not have the cognitive capacity to be convincing lie-tellers, a factor that is argued to contribute to the developmental variation found in children’s lie-telling behaviour at different ages. Studies have confirmed that children’s conceptual and ethical/moral understanding of lie-and truth-telling comes into view during their early pre-school years and develops quickly throughout their school years. As highlighted by Xu et.al (2011), their social understanding and way of thinking is argued to be heterogeneous, hence, as early as the age of three years, they normally have an undeveloped idea of lies, and are as result able to tell between moral, social-conventional and individual acts in addition to their impacts. Additionally, their social knowledge at this particular period is often developed through their experiences across the social domains. According to the Academic Press (2011), lie-telling among them is thus a complex social behaviour since it involves reasoning in many domains. For instance, anti-social and pro-social lies contravene moral rules, but pro-social truths contravene social-conventional rules. Distinguishing, understanding in addition to internalizing these particular social rules normally takes place with development, facilitated by their relations with parents and others, and children’s developing cognitive maturity. Hence, children are more likely to develop their understanding of lying through an amalgamation of social experiences over time. On the other hand, according Talwar & Lee (2008), with increasing ages; children start to distinguish anti-social lies from sincere mistakes, exaggerations, and eventually mockery. Children also slowly take into account the social situation in which the lies are informed as well as the intention of the individual telling the lies when evaluating lies. In general, by early teenage years, their conceptual as well as moral understanding of lying and telling the truth becomes comparable to that of adults. However, despite the advances in recent research, Lee et.al (2011) argues one significant limitation holds back the facts regarding the development of the concepts and the moral judgments of lie-and truth-telling. According to Lee et.al (2011), most studies on the lying concept have mainly focused on Western children. It is thus uncertain whether the developmental depiction obtained thus far regarding the children’s perception of lie-and truth-telling is wide-reaching or culturally specific. Lee et.al (2011) argues that the lying behaviour is a social cognitive concept with social principles being a significant determinant of the concept. As such, given the fact that social principles tend to differ between different cultures, it is likely that the theory might account for cultural disparities in the formation of a lie. Lee et.al (2011) further argues that a number of anthropological studies as well as anecdotal reports appear to be backing this suggestion. However, no direct validate cross-cultural evidence are available. As highlighted by Sabbagh et.al (2010), recent studies also suggest that the conceptual structures of children can also change in reply to experiences they derive from their general cognitive adaptation skills, which are crucial to the mind development theory. As Sabbagh et.al (2010) highlights, they gain such experiences through a continuous lie-telling failures and successes, as a consequence, shaping their understanding of deliberate, strategic lying over a given time period. Those children who are most cognitively skillful are argued to be the fastest in terms of understanding deception. According to McCarthy & Lee (2009), those who identify with this cue to lying are thereafter able to influence these signals to lie successfully. Thus, the understanding of strategic deception is also more likely to be a significant predictor of effective lie-telling. On the other hand, Smetana (2006) dispute the above sentiments arguing that this psychology has not yet been fully investigated, however, it is able to enlighten the perceptive regarding the influence that meta-cognitive factors have on the children’s understanding of strategic lying. According to the Academic Press (2011), there is no available evidence to support the capability of children to make strategic decisions as regards when to tell the truth or when to say a lie, or whether to develop a cost-benefit assessment prior to making any decision. As a result, the Academic Press (2011) argues that further examination on the interpersonal as well as motivational contexts of lie telling ought to be done. As Smetana (2006) argues, children are also known to defy moral rules their based on social-conventional rules initiated more often with their mothers. In response to transgressions, authoritative mothers are known to insist on social order, while emphasizing the consequences to the wellbeing of the victims of moral transgression. As the children start to try out lying, authoritative parents are normally forced to employ anti-social lies as moral breach and focus on the harm. Additionally; mothers are also known to employ the use of prosocial truths to educe lessons on social customs (mores), for instance “if you cannot utter anything pleasant, then you rather be silent”. According to Bjorklund & Blasi (2011, in theory, they (children) gain social acquaintance through this kind of interactions with their particular environments, a factor that plays a significant role influencing their lie-and-truth telling behaviour. The Academic Press (2011), on other hand, argues that parents who are not authoritative seem not to display domain consistency in their reactions to social transgression. As a result of this, they often convey mixed signals, confusing their children’s domain differentiation of social knowledge. However, Smetana (2006) argues that the about sentiments alone cannot elucidate the emergence of the early deceptive behaviour, how the understanding of deception becomes rich and nuanced, or how the children develop an understanding of deceptive strategies. According to Zelazo & Muller (2002) some of existing evidences reveal that lie-telling behaviour can also be attributed to executive functioning. Defined as higher order psychological processes, executive functioning is normally concerned with goal-oriented behaviour under conscious control. Executive functioning entails a set of cognitive skills such as planning inhibitory control, self-regulation; strategy employment, and attentional flexibility. As highlighted Popligera et.al (2011), executive functioning abilities have been confirmed to come out during late infancy and increase during childhood years, a period when many researchers have observed increases in terms of lie-telling skills. In particular, Carl &Moses (2001) highlights that it has been specified that working memory and inhibitory control might be directly correlated to deception among children. According to Carl &Moses (2001) inhibitory control can be described as the capability to restrain inquisitive thought actions, whereas working memory is the system that temporarily holds and process information in human mind. When telling lies, children have to restrain the conveying of wrongdoing (transgression) that they intend to conceal and tell the false statements that are contrary to the reality. In addition, in order to continue their lies, children have to inhibit thoughts and information that is different to their lies as that might reveal their wrongdoing while retaining in their memory the contents of their lie. Therefore, to say lies and lie successfully, children have to be able to maintain conflict alternatives in their mind. On the other hand, Talwar & Lee (2008) highlights that only a few studies have investigated the relationship between the executive functioning of children and their lie-telling. As a result, more research ought to be carried out to address the gap in literature by exploring the relations between executive functioning of children and their lie-telling behaviours. Conclusion From the above analysis, what can be deduced is the fact that despite recent progress in trying to understand the emergence of lying behaviour among children, many questions remain unanswered. For instance, even though observational statistics suggest that children as young as two years of age produce intentional false assertions, it is not clear whether such assertions are merely some form of jokes, wish fulfillment, or actual deception. Another question that can be drawn from the analysis is whether it is logical to presuppose that lying is designed to serve the adaptive role for children owing to their lack of social power and physical strength. In my opinion, therefore, I think it will be of use if transactional model of deception development are developed as well as refined in order to understand and elucidate why and how normative lying transform to become problem behaviour. References Bjorklund, D.F & Blasi, C.H. (2011). Child and Adolescent Development: An Integrated Approach, Engage Learning Academic Press. (2011).Advances in Child Development and Behavior, Volume 40, Academic Press Ceci,S.J,Leitchman,D.M,Putnick,M,Leitchman,M,Putnick,M.E.(2013).Cognitive and Social Factors in Early Deception, Psychology Press Carlson, S.M, Moses, L.J & Breton C. (2002).How Specific is the Relation between Executive Functioning and Theory of Mind? Contribution of Inhibitory Control and Working Memory. Infant and Child Development, (11), Pp73–92 Itakura, S & Fujita, K. (2008).Origins of the Social Mind: Evolutionary and Developmental Views, Springer Lee,K,Xu,F,Fu,G,Cameron,C.A & Chen,S.(2011).Taiwan and Mainland Chinese and Canadian children’s categorization and evaluation of lie- and truth-telling: A modesty effect, British Journal of Developmental Psychology,19, 525–542 McCarthy, A & Lee, K. (2009).Children’s Knowledge of deceptive Gaze Cues and its Relation to their Actual Lying Behaviour. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 103,117- 134 Popligera, M, Talwara, V & Crossman, A. (2011).Predictors of Children’s Prosocial Lie-Telling: Motivation, Socialization Variables, and Moral Understanding, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Vol.110, Iss.3, Pp 373–392 Sabbagh, M.A, Hopkins, S, Benson, J.E & Flanagan, J.R. (2010).Conceptual Change and Pre- schoolers’ Theory of Mind: Evidence from Load-force Adaptation, Neural Networks, 23, 1043-1050 Talwar, V & Lee, K, 2008, Social and Cognitive Correlates of Children’s Lying Behaviour, Journal on Children Development, 79 (4), Pp 866-881 Xu, F, Bao, X, Fu, G, Talwar, V & Lee, K. (2011). Lying and Truth-Telling in Children: From Concept to Action, Journal on Child Development, 81(2): 581–596. Zelazo, P, Muller, U. (2002).Executive Function in Typical and Atypical Development. Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development, Blackwell Publishers, Pp445–470. Read More

Distinguishing, understanding in addition to internalizing these particular social rules normally takes place with development, facilitated by their relations with parents and others, and children’s developing cognitive maturity. Hence, children are more likely to develop their understanding of lying through an amalgamation of social experiences over time. On the other hand, according Talwar & Lee (2008), with increasing ages; children start to distinguish anti-social lies from sincere mistakes, exaggerations, and eventually mockery.

Children also slowly take into account the social situation in which the lies are informed as well as the intention of the individual telling the lies when evaluating lies. In general, by early teenage years, their conceptual as well as moral understanding of lying and telling the truth becomes comparable to that of adults. However, despite the advances in recent research, Lee et.al (2011) argues one significant limitation holds back the facts regarding the development of the concepts and the moral judgments of lie-and truth-telling.

According to Lee et.al (2011), most studies on the lying concept have mainly focused on Western children. It is thus uncertain whether the developmental depiction obtained thus far regarding the children’s perception of lie-and truth-telling is wide-reaching or culturally specific. Lee et.al (2011) argues that the lying behaviour is a social cognitive concept with social principles being a significant determinant of the concept. As such, given the fact that social principles tend to differ between different cultures, it is likely that the theory might account for cultural disparities in the formation of a lie. Lee et.al (2011) further argues that a number of anthropological studies as well as anecdotal reports appear to be backing this suggestion.

However, no direct validate cross-cultural evidence are available. As highlighted by Sabbagh et.al (2010), recent studies also suggest that the conceptual structures of children can also change in reply to experiences they derive from their general cognitive adaptation skills, which are crucial to the mind development theory. As Sabbagh et.al (2010) highlights, they gain such experiences through a continuous lie-telling failures and successes, as a consequence, shaping their understanding of deliberate, strategic lying over a given time period.

Those children who are most cognitively skillful are argued to be the fastest in terms of understanding deception. According to McCarthy & Lee (2009), those who identify with this cue to lying are thereafter able to influence these signals to lie successfully. Thus, the understanding of strategic deception is also more likely to be a significant predictor of effective lie-telling. On the other hand, Smetana (2006) dispute the above sentiments arguing that this psychology has not yet been fully investigated, however, it is able to enlighten the perceptive regarding the influence that meta-cognitive factors have on the children’s understanding of strategic lying.

According to the Academic Press (2011), there is no available evidence to support the capability of children to make strategic decisions as regards when to tell the truth or when to say a lie, or whether to develop a cost-benefit assessment prior to making any decision. As a result, the Academic Press (2011) argues that further examination on the interpersonal as well as motivational contexts of lie telling ought to be done. As Smetana (2006) argues, children are also known to defy moral rules their based on social-conventional rules initiated more often with their mothers.

In response to transgressions, authoritative mothers are known to insist on social order, while emphasizing the consequences to the wellbeing of the victims of moral transgression. As the children start to try out lying, authoritative parents are normally forced to employ anti-social lies as moral breach and focus on the harm. Additionally; mothers are also known to employ the use of prosocial truths to educe lessons on social customs (mores), for instance “if you cannot utter anything pleasant, then you rather be silent”.

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