Data_Sheet_1_Truthful but Misleading: Advanced Linguistic Strategies for Lying Among Children.xls

We explored whether children could apply linguistic strategies for lying, i.e., manipulating linguistic content of speech to mislead others. We announced a knowledge-test entailing prizes in the classrooms of a primary school and a middle school. Altogether 79 Chinese children (6–18 years) voluntarily participated in the test: listening to a series of animal sounds before guessing the names of the animals. Meanwhile, behind the participants, a video was playing images that ostensibly corresponded to the sounds being played. In fact, this was not necessarily the case, i.e., some items cannot be solved because the sounds played are not from any animal but machine-synthesized. Participants were instructed not to look back at the video. However, 51 children peeked at the video for the unsolvable items, although the peeking behavior decreased with age. Moreover, when explaining how they correctly guessed the unsolvable items, children as young as 6 years old were able to apply a linguistic strategy (i.e., “capability attribution”) for lying. Besides “capability attribution,” Children also applied “fortune attribution” and “topic shift” for lying. Finally, “fortune attribution” and “topic shift” increased with age. Therefore, educators need to be aware that children are able to apply verbal strategies for lying that could involve truthful statements (i.e., “topic shift”) or statements that are difficult to be proved as untruthful (i.e., “fortune attribution”).

本研究旨在探究儿童是否能够运用语言策略进行谎言，即操纵言语内容以误导他人。我们在一所小学和一所中学的课堂中举办了一场包含奖金的知识测试。共有79名中国儿童（6至18岁）自愿参与测试：在听到一系列动物声音后猜测动物名称。与此同时，在参与者背后播放了一段视频，其中展示的图像似乎与播放的声音相对应。实际上，情况并非总是如此，即某些项目无法解决，因为播放的声音并非来自任何动物，而是由机器合成的。参与者被告知不要回头看视频。然而，尽管随着年龄的增长，偷看行为有所减少，但仍有51名儿童在遇到无法解决的问题时偷看了视频。此外，当解释他们如何正确猜测无法解决的问题时，甚至6岁的儿童也能够运用谎言的语言策略（即“能力归因”）。除了“能力归因”，儿童还应用了“运气归因”和“话题转移”来撒谎。最后，“运气归因”和“话题转移”随着儿童年龄的增长而增加。因此，教育者需意识到，儿童能够运用涉及真实陈述（即“话题转移”）或难以证明为虚假的陈述（即“运气归因”）的言语策略进行撒谎。