The Child Study team at John Jay College invites you and your child to participate in research on children’s cognitive and social development.

Please see below for more information regarding our study.

Requirements:  English-speaker; 3 years/11 months to 5-6 years old

Compensation: $15-20/hr

Duration: 1-2 hours

 

Child Deception Study

Research Projects

 

OUR RESEARCH TOPIC

We are interested in the development of children's cognitive and social behaviors, including things like ability to delay gratification and, in particular, lie-telling (both good/polite lies and self-serving lies, which normally appear at this 3-5 age).

We are doing a three-year, federally-funded (National Science Foundation) research study of young children and we hope to better understand how it is they develop the ability to lie - and to tell different kinds of lies. This is important because EVERYBODY LIES at least
a little, every day!

Right now, we know very little about how kids learn to lie (for example - telling people they like birthday gifts that they don't actually like). We know that most young children will tell lies to get out of trouble. Many will also tell lies to be polite. We want to learn how well they tell different kinds of lies at different ages, and how that social behavior (which is VERY normal in preschool) is related to other abilities (like understanding emotions, empathy, social skills, and verbal ability). My partner in this research, Dr. Victoria Talwar, was recently in a New York Magazine article on "Why kids lie".

OUR PROCEDURES

This is a 3-year study and we are recruiting families to participate 3 times across those 3 years. In the first year, we invite children and parents into our child study lab at John Jay when kids are between 3 years/11 months and 5-6 years of age. Children play different games and do different tasks for about 1-2 hours while parents complete a few questionnaires.

In addition to other games, children do 4 different tasks that are designed to elicit different types of lies (e.g., they are asked not to peek at a secret toy; we later ask if they peeked, and most children deny doing so). We look at whether or not children choose to lie, how well they do it and at what age they are able to do it well. We also assess other abilities, such as cognitive ability and executive control (e.g., can they whisper when we ask them to?) to better understand what is involved in the ability to tell lies.

Parents complete a basic background questionnaire, answer questions about their child's behavior/temperament, etc., and provide information (in the form of a 2-week diary that parents would send back to us) on how often their child lies at home.

One year later - we ask parents to repeat the 2-week lie diary and mail it back.

Finally, one more year later (so children families only visit our lab twice in three years), we bring the children back and repeat a similar lab visit. Parents and children complete similar measures as the first lab visit. There are still 4 lie opportunities, but they are changed to be new and more appropriate for the children now that they are older.

PAYMENT & PRIZES

At EVERY VISIT:

· Children receive prizes and gifts both during and at the end of their participation

· Parents are paid for their time and effort at BOTH visits, AND for sending in the 2-week lie diary in the middle year (when kids don't come in). So parents are paid 3 times.

· We offer additional payment if you refer other participants to our study.

· We’ll provide a brief report on your child’s cognitive development after each lab visit.

 

We hope this gives you a good sense for what we are working on. We would be more than happy to answer any additional questions you might have, and sincerely hope that you will consider participating. Children really do have fun participating in the research - and parents can learn lots of interesting things about their children's social behaviors.

 

If you are interested, please do not hesitate to contact us!

Dr. Angela Crossman, Ph.D.

Department of Psychology

445 West 59th Street

New York, NY 10019

To contact us:

Phone: 646-557-4650

E-mail: ChildDeceptionLab@gmail.com