This study examined whether or not young children could lie to save a cartoon hero who is popular among Japanese young children. Children had to lie to deceive his antagonist. The results indicated that 48% of children aged approximately 5 years and 90% of children aged approximately 6 years could lie and pass the deception task, whereas only 40% of children aged approximately 5 years and 56% of children aged approximately 6 years could pass the standard false-belief task. By contrast, 34% of children aged approximately 4 years passed the false-belief task, whereas only 29% of them passed the deception task, even when the experiment was designed to decrease the children's fear of confronting the scary-looking enemy. These results indicated difficulties experienced by younger children, especially those less than 4 years, when lying even about a familiar task. A logistic regression analysis showed that the performance on the false-belief task (1, 0), moral judgments about lying in the above situation (1, 0), and cheating by children at games and at play reported by their mothers (1,0) were positively associated with the performance on the deception task, after controlling for age. This study suggests that deceptive behavior of young children requires social abilities, as well as cognitive abilities.
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