Experts' and novices' abilities to detect children's high-stakes lies of omission

Kari L. Nysse-Carris; Bette L. Bottoms; Jessica M. Salerno

doi:10.1037/a0022136

Experts' and novices' abilities to detect children's high-stakes lies of omission

Kari L. Nysse-Carris, Bette L. Bottoms, Jessica M. Salerno

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigated adults' abilities to detect lies told by 3- to 6-year-old children. Expert forensic interviewers and novices watched videotapes of children who either lied or told the truth about their parent's transgression, rendered a dichotomous judgment of whether the child lied, rated their confidence in that judgment, and rated the children on various characteristics. Adults detected lies with greater than chance-but not impressive-accuracy, regardless of expertise level. Older children's lies were more detectable by experts than were younger children's. Adults were more confident in their judgments about older than younger children. Confidence in lie/truth judgments was not significantly correlated with actual lie detection accuracy.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	76-98
Number of pages	23
Journal	Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
Volume	17
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022136
State	Published - Feb 1 2011
Externally published	Yes

Keywords

Child witnesses
Deception detection
Legal testimony
Lying

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Social Psychology
Sociology and Political Science
Law

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10.1037/a0022136

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Experts' and novices' abilities to detect children's high-stakes lies of omission

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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