دراسة تُبين أن ذكراة الأطفال الكذابين هي الأفضل ،كما تبين كذلك أنهم الأفضل في الخداعِ اللفظي أيضاً .
الأطفال الذين لديهم ذاكرة جيدة لديهم أكثر مهارة في الكذب ، حسب درسة جديدة قامتْ بها جامعة Sheffield في المملكة المتحدة .
نتائج هي الدراسة التي نشرتْ في مجلة علم نفس الطفل ، تُثبت أن الكذابين الجيدين يمتلكون مهراات ذاكرة لفظية أفضل ، على الرغمِ من الفرق الذي حصل بإختلاف الكذابين الجيدين و السيئين .
ووفقاً للباحثين ، يوحي هذا النمط أن الذاكرة اللفظية تلعبُ دوراً في التجهيز و التلاعب بأجزاء متعددة من المعلومات .
على الرغم من أن الصلات بين مهارات الذاكرة وخيانة الأمانة قد تكون مقلقة بالنسبة لبعض الآباء والأمهات - يظهرُ البحث أيضا جانب مضيء محتمل لأولئك الذين يبحثون عن رعاية الأطفال.
وقال أحد الباحثين المشاركين في المشروع Elena Hoicka منthe University of Sheffield’s Department of Psychology في بيان صحفي: "على الرغم من الآباء والأمهات عادة يتعصبون عندما يكذب أطفالهم، من دواعي سرورنا أن نكشف لهم أنه عندما تكون أكذوبة أطفالهم ملقاة بشكل جيد ، هذا يعني أن أبنائهم أصبحت لديهم قدرةأفضل في التفكير وذاكرة ذات مهارات جيدة ".
The better the memory, the better the ‘verbal deception’ abilities.
Children
who possess good memory skills are also more adept at telling lies, a
new study by psychologists at the University of Sheffield in the UK has
found.
The team asked a number of six- and
seven-year-olds to play a simple game of trivia with them. The twist was
that the kids were given a chance to sneak a peek at the answers on the
back of the game cards when they thought no one was looking, but of
course they were being filmed by hidden cameras the whole time.
With
the researchers knowing exactly which of their young volunteers had
cheated, the children were then questioned about the answers they’d
given during the trivia game. This involved asking them about facts and
information that could have only been obtained by peeking at the back of
the cards, which allowed the researchers to measure the links between
the kids’ working memory and verbal deception skills. The aim was to
figure out what separates a good liar from a bad liar at an early age.
The
researchers wanted to measure two different types of memory in their
experiment: verbal working memory and visuo-spatial memory. Verbal
working memory relates to the amount of words a person is able to
remember at once, while visuo-spatial working memory is the number of
images that can be recalled at the same time.
The results of the
study, published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
demonstrate that good liars possess better verbal memory skills,
although, from this research’s findings at least, there appears to be no
difference between good and bad liars when it comes to visuo-spatial
memory.
According to the researchers, this pattern suggests that
“verbal working memory plays a role in processing and manipulating the
multiple pieces of information involved in lie-telling”, whereas image
recognition and recall abilities may be relatively unimportant when
people are being creative with the truth.
Although the links
between memory skills and dishonesty may be disconcerting for some
parents - not to mention kids who now know we’re onto them - the
research also indicates a potential silver lining for those looking
after children.
One of the researchers involved with the project,
Elena Hoicka from the University of Sheffield’s Department of
Psychology, said in a press release: “While parents are usually not too
proud when their kids lie, they can at least be pleased to discover that
when their children are lying well, it means their children are
becoming better at thinking and have good memory skills.”
