Are Your Kids Telling the Truth?

Ivanhoe Newswire

By Kirsten Houmann, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Do you think you can smell your child's lies from a mile away? New research says a parent's nose for truth may be selective.

A study at the University of California, Davis, shows adults are likely to see the untruth in a child's false reports -- but also likely to fall for false denials.

Participating adults viewed videotapes of three and five-year-old children being interviewed for positive and negative events that did and didn't take place. For "true" events, the children either confirmed it had happened or untruthfully denied that it hadn't. For "false" events, they either truthfully denied it had happened or made up a story.

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Participants then evaluated the truthfulness of each child. Results show the adults usually saw the untruthfulness in false accounts but were prone to mistakenly believing false denials.

"This suggests that we adults are better at detecting false reports, which can protect the innocent from false allegations; but we are less good at recognizing false denials, which suggests that we might fail to protect children who falsely deny actual victimization," Donna Shestowsky, J.D., Ph.D., acting professor of law at the University of California, Davis, and co-author of the study, told Ivanhoe.

Although this study is the first step in a large-scale research project, Dr. Shestowsky says results should still urge people -- and parents -- to do something about the communication gap between adults and children.

"One possible approach to resolving this problem is just making people aware of this phenomenon," she said.

SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Donna Shestowsky, J.D., Ph.D.; Presented at the American Psychological Association's 116th Annual Meeting, Aug. 14-17

If this story or any other Ivanhoe story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Lindsay Braun at lbraun@ivanhoe.com.