Children who lie best have better verbal memory than others, according to a British study. However, they are not distinguished by their visual memory.
Notice to parents! If your child is used to lying, don’t worry, as he may well have some good surprises in store for you. Indeed, according to a study from the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom), children who excel in the art of lying have better memories than others.
In these works published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the scientists selected 114 children aged 6 to 7 from four schools in Great Britain. In the study, they put them through a question-and-answer game.
The researchers thus gave them cards containing questions about cartoon characters and whose answers were indicated on the back, which the children were instructed not to consult. And thanks to a hidden camera, they spotted the children who still watched the responses despite the ban.
25% of children cheated
First surprising result, but reassuring, only 25% of children cheated while looking at the answers. In the rest of their work, the team wanted to identify those who were lying better than the others. She then looked at the ability of children to invent a credible story to “cover up” their lie.
And the data they report is final. Through individual memory tests, researchers found that good liars had better verbal memory. This is characterized by the number of words that a person can assimilate in a given period of time. However, these potential “pinocchios” were not distinguished by good visual memory. The authors explain these results by the fact that, “to lie, it is necessary to remember a lot of verbal information while the memory of images plays a less important role. “
Adults lie 20% of their time
“While parents are generally not very proud when their children lie, they can at least be happy to find that when their children lie well, it means that they are thinking better and better and developing good memories. ”Says Dr. Elena Hoicka, lead author of the study.
She adds: “When children lie well, it shows that they are refining their ability to think and that they have a good memory”.
She concludes by recalling that “lies represent about 20% of adult conversations when they last 10 minutes or more. She doesn’t say, however, whether adults who lie have better memories too!
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