Children And Memories: Kids Who Lie A Lot Remember More

Of course, it's true. Children have been known to tell a fib or two. But do children who lie frequently have better memories?

Researchers at the Universities of Sheffield and North Florida investigated the role of working memory in verbal deception among children. They found that good liars oftentimes performed better on verbal memory tests when compared to bad ones.

For the study, researchers gave 100 6- to 7-year-old children the opportunity to peek at the final answers of a question on the back of a card during a trivia game. A hidden camera and correct answers, however, let the researchers determine who had peeked at the cards during the study.

Afterward, researchers further questioned the children to identify who was good at lying, by lying to both entrapment questions or, on the other hand, who was a bad liar, by lying about one or neither of the entrapment questions. The study authors measured two elements, including verbal and visuo-spatial working memory in children.

Lying is not easy. In other words, it requires keeping track of a good deal of verbal information to cover the track of your lie(s). Thus, researchers believe that the children who could better process their memories were better at keeping track of the memories that they based their lies on.

"We already know that adults lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes, so it's interesting to know why some children are able to tell more porkies than others. We'll now be looking to move the research forward to discover more about how children first learn to lie," Dr. Elena Hoicka, of the University of Sheffield's Department of Psychology, in a news release.

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

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