Cross-cultural differences in children's choices, categorizations, and evaluations of truths and lies.

This study examined cross-cultural differences and similarities in children's moral understanding of individual- or collective-oriented lies and truths. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-old Canadian and Chinese children were read stories about story characters facing moral dilemmas about whether to lie or tell the truth to help a group but harm an individual or vice versa. Participants chose to lie or to tell the truth as if they were the character (Experiments 1 and 2) and categorized and evaluated the story characters' truthful and untruthful statements (Experiments 3 and 4). Most children in both cultures labeled lies as lies and truths as truths. The major cultural differences lay in choices and moral evaluations. Chinese children chose lying to help a collective but harm an individual, and they rated it less negatively than lying with opposite consequences. Chinese children rated truth telling to help an individual but harm a group less positively than the alternative. Canadian children did the opposite. These findings suggest that cross-cultural differences in emphasis on groups versus individuals affect children's choices and moral judgments about truth and deception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social Perception Deficits After Traumatic Brain Injury: Interaction Between Emotion Recognition, Mentalizing Ability, and Social Communication.

Thirty-four adults with severe traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and 34 matched control participants were asked to interpret videotaped conversational exchanges. Study participants were asked to judge the speakers' emotions, the speakers' beliefs (first-order theory of mind), what the speakers intended their conversational partners to believe (second-order theory of mind), and what they meant by remarks that were sincere or literally untrue (i.e., a lie or sarcastic retort). The TBI group had marked difficulty judging most facets of social information. They could recognize speaker beliefs only when this information was explicitly provided. In general, emotion recognition and first-order theory of mind judgments were not related to the ability to understand social (conversational) inference, whereas second-order theory of mind judgments were related to that ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Humor and suicide: Favorite jokes of suicidal patients.

During an interview 20 patients who had attempted suicide and 20 matched nonsuicidal patients were asked to relate their favorite joke. Jokes were told by 12 attempters and 9 controls. 2 raters, blind to the purpose and nature of the study, rated each joke for direction of punishment expressed in the themes. Based on the combined chi-square probabilities associated with ratings by the 2 judges, suicidal Ss told significantly more jokes with a self-punishing theme than did nonsuicidal controls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of the common ground in interpreting ambiguous referential utterances.

Common ground is contextual information shared by a listener and speaker that enables the listener to convert an ambiguous utterance to an informative communication. Four experiments examined young children's understanding of the common ground in interpreting ambiguous referential utterances. Kindergarten and 2nd-grade children and college students were read short vignettes containing statement, joint activity, status common ground, and an ambiguous or informative utterance about a display of 4–6 object drawings. The subjects were asked (a) whether the listener knew which object to pick (Experiment 1), (b) to pick an object themselves or choose "none" (Experiment 2), (c) the source of the listener's knowledge in the context or utterance (Experiment 3), and (d) whether a designated object was the "right one," the one the speaker "meant," or the one the speaker "could have meant" (Experiment 4). Even the kindergarten children used statement information effectively in interpreting ambiguous utterances, and all groups had difficulty using status information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's false-belief reasoning: Interpretation of messages is no easier than the classic task.

E. J. Robinson and P. Mitchell (see record 1992-34569-001) devised a message-desire discrepant task in which a speaker gives a message based on a false belief. A correct nonliteral interpretation of the message requires taking into account this false belief, which children were more likely to achieve in this task than in a classic prediction task. In 2 studies reported here, the comparison using more closely matched tasks was repeated. Study 3 followed the Robinson and Mitchell procedure precisely but failed to replicate the constrast reported previously. Although the message-desire discrepant task reveals early understanding that messages are the product of mental representations, it offers no advantage over the classic test in revealing false-belief reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethnic stereotypes: Their effects on the perception of communicators of varying credibility.

A French-Canadian speaker tape-recorded 2 messages, 1 confirming, the other disconfirming, the appropriateness of the French-Canadian stereotype to himself. 1 message was heard by 96 undergraduates under different conditions of credibility produced by varying message intent and setting, and political belief. Ss rated the speaker on semantic differential scales assessing stereotypical and evaluative attributes. Ratings on the stereotypical dimension were influenced by message content and setting, whereas ratings on the evaluative dimension were primarily influenced by message content and political belief. Results suggest that a member of an ethnic group can, under some situations, modify stereotyped reactions to him, but that this tends to engender an unfavorable reaction in the listener. (French summary) (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Listener responsiveness and the coordination of conversation.

To examine how feedback influences conversation, 76 speaker Ss (selected from a group of university moviegoers and students) watched a movie and then summarized it to 1 or 2 listeners. The listeners provided varying amounts of feedback to the speaker. When 2 listeners were present, one could influence the speaker through feedback and the other could only eavesdrop on the conversation. When speakers received more feedback, both listeners understood the movie better. Feedback individuated communication—the listener who provided the feedback understood the movie better than the eavesdropper who listened to the same conversation. In part, feedback produced these effects by coordinating what the speaker said with what the listener needed to know. Listener feedback signaled listeners' prior knowledge of the movie, and speakers talked most efficiently about those sections of the movie about which listeners had prior knowledge. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How demonstrated comprehension can get muddled in production.

The discourse skills of 31 low-income and 30 middle-income kindergarten children (mean ages 5 yrs 2 mo and 5 yrs 4 mo) from the same classrooms were examined in 2 experiments. In each experiment a nonverbal demonstration of comprehension of the discourse material was assured before Ss were asked to express that same material verbally to another child. In Exp I, Ss were read stories that they acted out with props. When comprehension was assured they were asked to paraphrase the story to another. In Exp II, Ss were either shown or instructed verbally how to open an attractive box. When comprehension was assured they were asked to teach the "trick" to a blindfolded adult. Results from both experiments indicate that although it took the low-income Ss somewhat longer to comprehend the information, the greatest difference between the groups was in the ability to communicate information that they already knew. Low-income Ss produced less relevant information on both tasks, although this did not appear to be related to linguistic complexity or sheer output. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experts' and novices' abilities to detect children's high-stakes lies of omission.

We investigated adults' abilities to detect lies told by 3- to 6-year-old children. Expert forensic interviewers and novices watched videotapes of children who either lied or told the truth about their parent's transgression, rendered a dichotomous judgment of whether the child lied, rated their confidence in that judgment, and rated the children on various characteristics. Adults detected lies with greater than chance—but not impressive—accuracy, regardless of expertise level. Older children's lies were more detectable by experts than were younger children's. Adults were more confident in their judgments about older than younger children. Confidence in lie/truth judgments was not significantly correlated with actual lie detection accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adventures of a woman in science

This paper is divided into two parts. The first part describes the difficulties encountered in entering the scientific profession and staying there if one is a woman; the difficulties in combating the degrading sterotypes about women that are commonly held (women are believed to be submissive, unintelligent, uncreative, etc.); and the discrimination that accompanies beliefs in these sterotypes. The second part of the paper examines the evidence for the truth or falsity of the proposition that these stereotypes reflect woman's "innate" nature, and shows that there is no evidence to suggest that the proposition is true. On the other hand, there is evidence from social psychology that, for the most part, people act the way people around them expect them to act, and they believe that they are what others expect them to be. So if the scientific profession holds the outragious and erroneous belief that women can't be scientists, it is likely that few women will become scientists. This must change: the integrity of the progession is at stake.     

Young children's understanding of a speaker's intentional use of a false utterance.

72 1st and 3rd graders and college students were read short stories containing a terminal communication from a speaker to a listener. The consistency between the story and the terminal communication was manipulated by making factual information congruent or incongruent with the terminal utterance. The intentionality of the speaker's use of the utterance was manipulated by portraying the speaker as aware or unaware of the facts. S's understanding of the use of the utterance and of the relation between the utterance and the facts was assessed by questions. Results show that the 1st graders' responses to inconsistency were biased by a literal interpretative strategy; these children had little understanding of how to evaluate nonliteral intentionality in the use of an utterance. Third graders made mature interpretations of inconsistency in an utterance and had some understanding of the intentional use of a false utterance. This understanding increased with age. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning to detect deception.

Administered a lie detection test—a videotape presenting the faces and voices of senders delivering truthful and deceptive messages—to 191 undergraduates. For each message, Ss were asked to judge whether the sender was lying or telling the truth. Information identifying messages as truthful or deceptive was given to some Ss (learning conditions) but not to others (control). The information was provided either after Ss recorded their judgment on a particular item (post-message) or before the item itself was presented (premessage). The number of items for which information was provided was also varied. Accuracy of lie detection was calculated for all experimental conditions (when premessage information was given). In general, the more information (either pre or post) about deceivers' messages, the more accurate the detection of lies enacted by the same deceivers. However, the increase in accuracy did not generalize to accuracy of detecting lies enacted by other deceivers. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What's communication got to do with it? Gesture in children blind from birth.

It is widely accepted that gesture can serve a communicative function. The purpose of this study was to explore gesture use in congenitally blind individuals who have never seen gesture and have no experience with its communicative function. Four children blind from birth were tested in 3 discourse situations (narrative, reasoning, and spatial directions) and compared with groups of sighted and blindfolded sighted children. Blind children produced gestures, although not in all of the contexts in which sighted children gestured, and the gestures they produced resembled those of sighted children in both form and content. Results suggest that gesture may serve a function for the speaker that is independent of its impact on the listener. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ruse and representations: On children's ability to conceal information.

Reports a marked development between the ages of 3 and 5 yrs in children's ability to conceal information. In a situation of high-affect involvement, 3-yr-olds did not know to misinform or withhold information from a competitor who always chose the object for which they themselves had previously stated a preference. Although only 29% of 3-yr-olds knew to influence the competitor's mental state, 87% knew to physically exclude the competitor. There was no difference between children's performance when trying to obtain the object for themselves or predicting what a story character would do. The success of the older children in concealing information indicated their new representational understanding that to influence another's behavior, one must influence that person's mental state. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of egotism, negativity, and learned helplessness as explanations for poor performance after unsolvable problems.

After people work on unsolvable problems, they often perform poorly on a subsequent task. Egotism explains this decrement as the result of a strategy of low effort designed to blunt an attribution of poor ability should failure occur on the new task. The egotism explanation predicts that adding an element alleged to inhibit performance allows Ss to try without fear of an attribution of low ability. In contrast, learned helplessness predicts that adding an allegedly inhibitory element should lower the expectancy of control, making performance worse than usual. A 3rd explanation is "negativity." Like egotism, it predicts improved performance if an element said to inhibit performance is introduced, but for a different reason: to produce results opposite to the experimenter's suggestion. Unlike egotism, the negativity hypothesis predicts that adding an allegedly facilitating element will worsen performance. 50 college students were given either solvable or unsolvable concept formation problems and then worked on anagrams with or without music said to be distracting. In addition, there was a 5th condition in which Ss were given unsolvable problems followed by music said to facilitate performance. The performance decrement occurred only in the no-music condition, supporting the egotism explanation. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of sex of subject and story character on preschoolers' perceptions of affective responses and intrapersonal behavior in story sequences.

Data from 32 white, lower-class 3- and 4-yr-old children indicate that the ability to accurately identify affective and intrapersonal responses did not significantly vary with S's age or sex, or with sex of story character, and that children performed better on same-sex rather than on cross-sex stories regardless of age and mental ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Approximations of open quotient and speed quotient from glottal airflow and EGG waveforms: effects of measurement criteria and sound pressure level

A sample of speech acts in everyday discourse referring to persons or events having to do with the term mental retardation was analyzed in order to investigate the belief that language use both constructs and reflects cultural norms that define the social roles of persons reduced to object status through categorical membership. Speech acts gathered suggest four emergent themes: the discourse of category membership, the dichotomy of normal and abnormal, issues of place and space, and fear. These themes were explicated from a social constructionist perspective, displaying the way speech acts construct mental retardation and subvert individuals with the label into demeaned and ridiculed objects of cultural fear.     

Verbal deception from late childhood to middle adolescence and its relation to executive functioning skills.

The present investigation examined 8- to 16-year-olds' tendency to lie, the sophistication of their lies, and related cognitive factors. Participants were left alone and asked not to look at the answers to a test, but the majority peeked. The researcher then asked a series of questions to examine whether the participants would lie about their cheating and, if they did lie, evaluate the sophistication of their lies. Additionally, participants completed measures of working memory, inhibitory control, and planning skills. Results revealed that the sophistication of 8- to 16-year-olds' lies, but not their decision to lie, was significantly related to executive functioning skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cues to deception.

Do people behave differently when they are lying compared with when they are telling the truth? The combined results of 1,338 estimates of 158 cues to deception are reported. Results show that in some ways, liars are less forthcoming than truth tellers, and they tell less compelling tales. They also make a more negative impression and are more tense. Their stories include fewer ordinary imperfections and unusual contents. However, many behaviors showed no discernible links, or only weak links, to deceit. Cues to deception were more pronounced when people were motivated to succeed, especially when the motivations were identity relevant rather than monetary or material. Cues to deception were also stronger when lies were about transgressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A second look at second-order belief attribution in autism

Compared the performance of autistic and mentally retarded subjects, all of whom had passed a standard first-order test of false belief, on a new second-order belief task. 12 autistic and 12 mentally retarded subjects, matched on verbal mental age (assessed by PPVT and a sentence comprehension subtest of the CELF) and full-scale IQ were given two trials of a second-order reasoning task which was significantly shorter and less complex than the standard task used in all previous research. The majority of subjects in both groups passed the new task, and were able to give appropriate justifications to their responses. No group differences were found in performance on the control or test questions. Findings are interpreted as evidence for the role of information processing factors rather than conceptual factors in performance on higher order theory of mind tasks.