The Development Of Spontaneous Deception And Its Social, Cognitive, And Neural Correlates

Deception is very common in our everyday lives. The studies on the deceptive behavior have endured for one century. The present dissertation aimed to explore the cognitive, social and neural correlates underlying the spontaneous deception as well as the development of the spontaneous deception.The first part of the present dissertation (chapter2) examined both elementary children and adults’spontaneous behavior and their face expression features. In the study1, we designed a guessing game to examine whether the adults could deceive repeatedly and compare the differences of face expression between lying and telling truth. The guessing game was modeled after Greene&Paxton (2009) and the Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox (CERT) was used to recognize participants’face expression. The results showed that about89%of adults lied at lease once and there were significant differences of face expression (chin raise, lip corner pull, eye widen, blink eye closure, fear brow, brow lower) between lying and telling truth. In the study2, we designed a similar guessing game to explore the development of spontaneous deception and its face expression features in elementary school children. The results showed that about58%of elementary school children lied at lease once, and they were less likely to lie and lie less while age increased. The results also found that there were significant differences of face expression (fear brow, blink eye closure, lip stretch, smile, lip corner depressor) between children’s lying and telling truth, however, there was no significant relationship between intensity of face expression and age.The second part of the present dissertation (chapter3) examined adults and children’s spontaneous deception and their social and cognitive correlates. In the study1, we examined whether adults’ spontaneous deception were associated with personality factors. The big five factor, rotter trust scale, Machiavellianism scale and honesty scale were used to measure participants’ personality. The results showed that the openness in big five factors was significantly associated with deceptive behavior:the higher openness score was, the more they were likely to lie and lie more. In the study2, we examined the cognitive and social factors that were associated with children’s spontaneous deceptive behavior. In addition to the guessing game, children performed second-order false-belief tasks that assessed their theory of mind understanding. Children also performed three tasks that assessed their executive function ability:Digit Span forwards and backwards were used as short-term and working memory measures respectively, and the Word-Color Stroop task and the Flanker Fish task were used as inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility measures. The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire for children (EPQC) was used to measure children’s personality, and four moral stories were used to measure children’s moral conception and judgment about lying and truth telling. The results indicate that, with increased inhibitory control ability, children were significantly less likely to lie; among the liars, children with better task management and cognitive flexibility were more adept at lying and adopting different tactics. Results revealed the unique role that executive functioning plays in children’s deceptive behavior:Like a double-edged sword, executive functioning can inhibit children’s deceptive behavior on the one side, while it can promote children’s sophistication of deceptive tactics on the other.The third part of the present study (chapter4) aimed to explore the neural correlates underlying the adults and children’s spontaneous deception. In the study1, we recorded neural responses of adults during the game using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). We found that the incorrect-lie trials elicited significantly greater oxygenated hemoglobin ([Oxy-Hb]) changes in the left superior frontal gyrus, relative to the incorrect-truth trials. This finding suggests that spontaneous deception, like instructed deception, is an executive functioning intensive task and engenders greater involvement of the prefrontal cortical executive function network in spontaneous deception. We also found that the correct-truth trials produced greater neural activities in the frontal area than the incorrect-truth trials, a pattern suggesting the involvement of the reward system. Furthermore, the present study confirmed the feasibility of using NIRS to study deception. In the study2, among all children, the results showed that the correct-truth condition produced larger [oxy-Hb] signals than the incorrect-truth condition in the right superior frontal gyrus and the left superior frontal gyrus. Similar to findings from studies with adults, executive functioning and the reward system were activated when children lied. Contrary to the results with adults, no significant correlation was found between the correct-truth and the incorrect-lie condition. Results revealed that, like adults, executive functioning and the reward network play an important role in children’s spontaneous deception. However, findings indicated that differentiated self-evaluations in terms of dishonestly gained points vs. honestly gained points has yet to develop by this point in childhood.