An Eye-Tracking Research On Children’s Lying Behavior

Lying behavior is an intentional behavior to foster the false belief of others and enable others to produce false belief. Dozen of existing studies have focused on the development law and the earliest event occurrence time of lying behavior and so on. Some scholars also concentrated on polygraph of adults to provide more information for investigation. While little has known about children’s eye movement while lying at home and abroad. So what’s the difference of eye movement between children and adults? What can we learn between children’s eye movement and lying behavior? Therefore, we try to explore the process of children’s eye movement and indicate the relationship between eye movement index and children’s theory of mind(TOM)、executive function (EF) and intelligence quotient (IQ).An experimental paradigm of "temptation resistance situation"is applied in this study and4experiment were carried out.In experiment1a scenario of "listen carefully and guess what this animal is" was established to collect the data of eye movement while lying.In experiment2the relationship between eye movement and theory of mind are analyzed.While in experiment3and4followed the relationship between executive function、intelligence quotient and eye movement.The conclusions are as followed:1.There was no significant difference between children of4、5、6years old groups when they peeping or lying. While the number of children lying were significant more than children confessing either before or after commitment.2. The rate of confession for4years old group is significantly higher than6while this gap has been reduced after commition.Children of6were on a transition stage.3.Some strategies were explored to patch up a lie while answering experimenter’s questions.Children of5years old group and6(especially6)prefer to give incorrect answers even though they know the right answers before commitment while less after commitment.4. When presenting group picture, the fixation time and number of point on fixation of lying children before commitment were obviously less than children confessing, while this tendency was inclined to appear after commitment.5. When presenting target picture, the fixation time and number of point on fixation of lying children of4and5before commitment were obviously more than confessing children of6years old groups.6. There was no significant difference on the area of pupil between children lying and committing of all ages.7. Along with the increase of age, the scores of executive function and theory of mind showed a ascending trend.while there was no significant difference between4and5,6,as well as5and6years old groups.8. The longer children consumed on the right answer while reacting on the executive function task, the longer children will expend for the AOI-target of group picture and AOI-head of target picture.9. The higher score children got on the first-order theory of mind task, the less gazing time and fixation point will be on the AOI-target of group picture and there was no significant difference between eye movement and second-order theory of mind task.10. There was no significant difference between children’s intelligence quotient of all age groups.While these children who got a high score would spent more time and averted eye conctact on target picture after commitment.The innovations of this study are as follows:This is the first quantitative study using eye tracking techonology to explore the relationship between eye movement and executive function theory of mind and IQ. What’s more, it has revealed some relationship between eye movement and other influence factors.This is of prime importance on the psychological mechanism of children’s lying behavior.