Lying Children Are More Intelligent: Better Verbal Memory Found by New Study

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Children who are good at lying are found to be more intelligent and having better memories, according to a new study.

Psychology researchers from the Universities of North Florida, Sheffield, and Stirling found that children who were good liars have better verbal working memories. The findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

The interesting study was performed to discover what the working memory does in verbal deception among children. The researchers gathered 114 children, ages 6 to 7, from four British schools to take trivia card quiz. Each child was told not to peek at the answers written on the backs of the card and researchers were able to know which kid peeked at the answers by using a hidden camera.

"It takes mental effort to keep in mind what you know you did, what you think the researcher knows, and plan a way so you don't get caught," said lead author Tracy Alloway from the University of North Florida, via Forbes.

She adds that the research enabled them to discover that verbal working memory is important to "complex social interactions like lying" because doing so would need holding on to different information and those who had better memories could better keep track of their lies. The research is the only study so far that gives evidence that verbal working memory is associated to lying.

Alloway and colleagues were also able to determine the good liars in the group by measuring their verbal and visuospatial working memory, according to the University Herald.

"Those with poor working memory would get worked up when answering, while those with good working memory would even offer explanations for how they knew the 'correct' answer to the answer about the cartoon Spaceboy [trivia quiz]," Alloway explained.

As for parents who think that lying is bad, it could be a good sign of intelligence.

"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," said Dr Elena Hoicka from the University of Sheffield, as per Eureka Alert.

It is said that adults lie in nearly every fifth social interactions that last at least 10 more minutes, Dr Hoicka said. She explained that it is fascinating to discover the reason why some children are able to tell more lies than others. She adds that further research will be conducted to know how children first learn how to lie.