The Research On The Effect That Executive Function And Theory Of Mind Have On Children’s Lying

As early as1880s, people began to carry search on lying activity. For recent years, the investigation on children’s lying is rising up. The present research shows that lying is relevant to executive function, theory of mind and intelligence. Most of these research only select the data of executive function, theory of mind and lying of children at particular ages to derive their relationship with lying. We all know that children behave lying in age of3and highly develop from age of3with both executive function and theory of mind, turn its way in age of4.This essay selects2.5-4years-old children who are in the early lying period as investigation object. We trained them executive function and theory of mind to see if children’s lying activity are different. We suppose that both executive function and theory of mind are the premise if lying activity.The research contains two experiment:experiment1and2. Both of them use adapted "hide and find" game in testing lying method. There are4stages in both experiments:pretest, training, posttest and tracking.The experiment1could tell the relationship of lying between executive function and theory of mind. The pretest has3part including intelligence, theory of mind and executive function. According to the result of executive function pretest, we divide these children into two groups, test group and control group. Adapted Heartflower task is used as training program for both test group and control group. After5days continuously training, another lying test tracking would be necessary. The observation of both group lying condition would help find out if the executive function training would lead to earlier happen of lying activity and if this lying activity is stable.We can get such conclusion from experiment1and experiment2:1. The children of age2.5-4can improve their executive function by training. 2. Children would lie earlier if they are trained.3. The lying activity caused by executive function training is stable.4. The children of age2.5-4can improve their theory of mind by training.5. Children would lie earlier if they are trained.6. The lying activity caused by theory of mind training is stable.The result of the two experiment confirm the hypothesis of this paper, both of executive function and theory of mind are premise of lying.