Hu Chao, Huang Jinhao, Wang Qiandong, Weare Ethan, Fu Genyue
Institute of Psychological Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
Art Therapy Psychological Research Centre, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2020 Apr 24;11:676. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00676. eCollection 2020.
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").
我们探究了儿童是否能够运用语言策略来撒谎，即操纵言语的语言内容以误导他人。我们在一所小学和一所中学的教室里宣布了一项有奖品的知识测试。共有79名中国儿童（6至18岁）自愿参加了测试：在猜测动物名字之前先听一系列动物声音。与此同时，在参与者身后，播放着一个视频，表面上显示的图像与正在播放的声音相对应。实际上并非一定如此，也就是说，有些题目无法解答，因为播放的声音并非来自任何动物，而是机器合成的。参与者被指示不要回头看视频。然而，51名儿童偷看了那些无法解答题目的视频，尽管偷看行为随着年龄增长而减少。此外，当解释他们如何正确猜出那些无法解答的题目时，年仅6岁的儿童就能运用一种撒谎的语言策略（即“能力归因”）。除了“能力归因”，儿童还运用“运气归因”和“话题转移”来撒谎。最后，“运气归因”和“话题转移”随着年龄增长而增加。因此，教育工作者需要意识到，儿童能够运用言语策略来撒谎，这些策略可能涉及真实陈述（即“话题转移”）或难以被证明为不真实的陈述（即“运气归因”）。
