Author(s)

Fangbing Qu, Jia Han, Jianping Wang and Changwei Gu

Corresponding Author

Changwei Gu

ABSTRACT

The development of children’s deception behavior has drawn much attention recently. This paper presents an insight into the deception acquisition of preschoolers and its relationship with one’s inhibitory control ability. By conducting the paper-cup guessing game modified from classical deception paradigm and the go-nogo inhibitory control test, the present study suggests that even 4 years old preschoolers can acquire the ability of deception after discovering the benefit of deception. Preschoolers showed a pattern of lower deception rate at the very beginning of the first session. However, the deception rates soared up to nearly 80%, as they went through 5 consecutive days of paper-cup guessing game. Besides, results also suggested that preschoolers’ inhibitory control performance in the third session of IC test significantly better than the first session as an effect of deception experience. These findings extend our understandings of the initial development of human’s deception behavior and its relationship with one’s cognitive factors such as inhibitory control from the perspective of child development.

KEYWORDS

Preschooler, Deception Acquisition, Inhibitory Control, Benefit of Deception