Children's Repeated Lies and Truths: Effects on Adults' Judgments and Reality Monitoring Scores

Deception research has not taken into account that children are often interviewed repeatedly about their experiences. This study is an experiment concerning adults' (n = 88) ability to correctly detect deception and truth in repeatedly interviewed children (11-year-olds), who had watched a live show by a magician, or had invented such an event. The overall accuracy (59%) was not significantly better than chance, in line with previous research. The three most frequent self-reported cues to deception were, in order, consistency between the child's statements, the child's confidence, and richness of detail. Truth-telling children were more prone to make both omissions and commissions than deceptive children. The reality monitoring technique was able to correctly discriminate between truthful and deceptive accounts. The theoretical and applied implications of the results are discussed.