to lie as a tactical strategy in order to avoid those con-
sequences. Moreover, some research suggests that
when children are in hostile environments, where they
perceive that there are similar negative outcomes
whether they are caught in a lie or telling the truth,
children are more likely to lie and to be convincing
liars, even at a young age.
When telling a lie, it is important to be a convincing
liar so as to avoid detection. Thus, it is important to
control one’s verbal and nonverbal expressive behav-
iors. Liars must ensure that what they say and how they
present themselves do not contradict. If they are lying
about some misdeed, they do not want to appear ner-
vous or shifty so as to raise suspicions in their inter-
rogator or others. Similarly, they will want to make sure
that all their verbal statements made after their initial lie
do not contradict or reveal information that may make
others disbelieve their claims. Thus, lie tellers have to
control both their verbal and their nonverbal expressive
behaviors, lest they be detected by others. According to
studies that examine the detection of children’s false
statements, adults make use of such verbal and nonver-
bal cues to discriminate between the truthful and decep-
tive statements of children. There are two measurement
techniques used for detection of children’s deception:
Either adults are asked to detect lies by observing video
clips of lie and truth tellers’ reports and to provide judg-
ments regarding the veracity of each report or the
occurrences and frequencies of honest and dishonest
behaviors are compared with the scores of lie and truth
tellers.Detecting Deception
Research on detecting children’s truth- and lie-telling
behaviors has been conducted in both laboratory and
field studies. Laboratory studies have usually used
one of two methodologies to detect deception. In the
first, children are told to make a false report about an
event. These reports are examined using one or both
of the following measurement techniques: Trained
coders observe the reports for behavioral markers, or
video clips of the children’s reports are shown to
adults, who are asked to discriminate between the
truth and lie tellers. This methodology allows exami-
nation of children’s false reports about specifically
designed events that may be analogous to legally rel-
evant settings, such as children reporting about a med-
ical examination. However, such reports may be
unnatural due to children being instructed to lie or“pretend,” making the act of lying in these cases of
very low perceived consequences and thereby unlike
certain real-life situations. In the second commonly
used laboratory-based methodology, naturalistic situ-
ations are created in which children can choose to lie
spontaneously about an event, such as committing a
transgression (e.g., peeking at a forbidden toy). Video
clips of children’s behaviors in these situations are
used for detecting the truthfulness of their claims. In
these naturalistic lie-telling situations, children may
have greater motivation to lie due to the perceived
increased risk of consequences of the situation (e.g.,
getting caught), and thus, they have greater ecological
validity. However, current laboratory procedures tend
to create situations where children produce only short
verbal reports, and the situations created are not nec-
essarily similar to the types of reports given in the
legal system. Field study reports, another methodol-
ogy, use children’s actual reports of events (e.g., sex-
ual abuse) to analyze statements for markers of
deception. This methodology has the advantage of
being realistic and having ecological validity because
actual forensic reports are used. However, unlike the
other methodologies where it is known for certain that
the child is lying, it is impossible to know for certain
which reports are fabricated and which are true.Children’s Nonverbal Deception Cues
Research has found that when children lie, they reveal
subtle signs of their deception in their nonverbal
expressive behavior when compared with truth tellers.
For instance, in some cases, children will have bigger
smiles. However, in other circumstances, lie tellers
have been found to display more negative expressive
behaviors than do truth tellers. Other behavioral mark-
ers of a liar include nonfacial cues such as hand and
arm movements, leg and foot movements, and more
pauses in speech. Depending on the situation, children
may show different behavioral cues to their deception
owing to feelings of guilt, fear, or excitement. While
these behavioral cues are noted, there are no typical
markers of deception across all situations, and any dif-
ferences found between the nonverbal expressive
behaviors of liars and truth tellers are subtle and only
detected by trained coders looking for such differences.
Age differences in children’s abilities to control
their nonverbal expressive behaviors while in a poten-
tially deceiving situation have been revealed from
some studies using adult observers of these behaviors.Detection of Deception in Children——— 213D-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:41 PM Page 213