Children who lie make better thinkers?
Does your child tend to come up with a few porkies now and again? Well it appears you have nothing to worry about as a study carried out by psychologists at the University of Sheffield has found that children who have a tendency to lie could benefit from a better memory.
The psychologists theory comes from the idea that it takes considerable thought and memory to keep track of lies and stick to them so as not get caught out, as covering lies calls for keeping track of lots of verbal information, which is what they believe makes for a better memory.
To come up with this theory, psychologists gave 135 children, aged between six and seven years, a trivia test, allowing them to look at the answers on the back of the card if they wanted to. Recorded on a hidden camera, the children who chose to peek for the answers, and later denied doing so when asked, performed better on a memory test conducted at a later stage in the study than the children who did not peek.
Dr. Elena Hoicka from the University said of the results:
“While parents are usually not too proud when their kids lie, they can at least be pleased to discover that when their children are lying well, it means their children are becoming better at thinking and have good memory skills.”
Project lead from the University of North Florida, Dr Tracy Alloway, also commented on the research and it’s links:
“This research shows that thought processes, specifically verbal working memory, are important to complex social interactions like lying because the children needed to juggle multiple pieces of information while keeping the researcher’s perspective in mind.”
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Originally posted 2015-06-29 14:47:47.