Posted on 06/30/2007 5:24:12 PM PDT by blam
Babies not as innocent as they pretend
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 01/07/2007
Whether lying about raiding the biscuit tin or denying they broke a toy, all children try to mislead their parents at some time. Yet it now appears that babies learn to deceive from a far younger age than anyone previously suspected.
Behavioural experts have found that infants begin to lie from as young as six months. Simple fibs help to train them for more complex deceptions in later life.
Until now, psychologists had thought the developing brains were not capable of the difficult art of lying until four years old.
Following studies of more than 50 children and interviews with parents, Dr Vasudevi Reddy, of the University of Portsmouth's psychology department, says she has identified seven categories of deception used between six months and three-years-old.
Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as concealing forbidden activities or trying to distract parents' attention.
By the age of two, toddlers could use far more devious techniques, such as bluffing when threatened with a punishment.
Dr Reddy said: "Fake crying is one of the earliest forms of deception to emerge, and infants use it to get attention even though nothing is wrong. You can tell, as they will then pause while they wait to hear if their mother is responding, before crying again.
"It demonstrates they're clearly able to distinguish that what they are doing will have an effect. This is essentially all adults do when they tell lies, except in adults it becomes more morally loaded."
She added: "Later it becomes more sophisticated by saying, 'I don't care' when threatened with a punishment - when they clearly do."
Dr Reddy thinks children use early fibs to discover what kinds of lie work in certain situations, and also learn the negative consequences of lying too much.
I suppose this is new to people who don’t have children.
new = news
Bill Clinton learned deception in the womb, and has improved on it ever since.
My pastor used to visit hospitals when a member had a newborn baby and say “I see you gave birth to a new sin nature”.
His way of saying that all are sinners in the eyes of God and need the forgiveness of Christ.
Yes, babies are “innocent” in our eyes but nobody has to teach them how to lie or be manipulative. We all pick that up pretty quickly, usually right after the first negative reinforcement.
Next we will be reading something even more surprising, like, little boys are DIFFERENT than little girls!!
Ah at least Bill and Hillary have something in common. They are both compulsive and pathological liars, they deserve each other.
or infants pee in their diapers because they can......
Well, that nails it. If Dr. Vasudevi Reddy of the U. of P. used more than 50 children and their parents to confirm this, we should all believe it.
Gee, your pastor sounds like he’d be a blast at parties.
I knew there was something about babies that I didn’t like.
All one has to do is walk into a day care center to find this out.
Jewish babies are born with guilt, but Catholic babies have to go to catechism school to learn it...
Original Sin proved right again. Like our friend said, no surprise to those of us who are parents.
This is false. Research into moral development, done as early as the 1920's, demonstrated clearly that babies are amoral little creatures who have to be taught right and wrong, and will happily lie as soon as they figure out what speech is all about. Psychology has lost some great research and profound insights due to the shallowness of current training, which devalues anything published more than five years ago, and which emphasizes garbage like "multicultural competence" instead of good empirical study.
Is that a deception or simply a version of, "Hey Mom, come here!"?
It’s called original sin!
TT, I'd punch your pastor in the face if he said that about either of my children after they were first born. To whatever extent that the ability to lie is hardwired, it's because it is very useful for our personal survival. I can't believe your pastor actually reminds his flock that their newborn is bound for Hell because God created such a system to punish two people 6000 years ago, willfully.
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