Liar, liar, working memory on fire: Investigating the role of working memory in childhood verbal deception
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-1-2015
Abstract
The aim of the current study was to investigate the role of working memory in verbal deception in children. We presented 6- and 7-year-olds with a temptation resistance paradigm; they played a trivia game and were then given an opportunity to peek at the final answers on the back of a card. Measures of both verbal and visuospatial working memory were included. The good liars performed better on the verbal working memory test in both processing and recall compared with the bad liars. However, there was no difference in visuospatial working scores between good liars and bad liars. This pattern suggests that verbal working memory plays a role in processing and manipulating the multiple pieces of information involved in lie-telling.
Publication Title
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Volume
137
First Page
30
Last Page
38
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1016/j.jecp.2015.03.013
PubMed ID
25913892
ISSN
00220965
Citation Information
Alloway, McCallum, F., Alloway, R. G., & Hoicka, E. (2015). Liar, liar, working memory on fire: Investigating the role of working memory in childhood verbal deception. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 137, 30–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.03.013