Exploring the Ability to Deceive in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

104 Pages·2009·0.26 MB·English

by  Paul Dumbleton

EXPLORING THE ABILITY TO DECEIVE IN CHILDREN WITH
AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS

by

ANNIE SZE MAN LI

A thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology
in conformity with the requirements for
the degree of Master of Science

Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
September, 2009

Copyright © Annie Sze Man Li, 2009
Abstract
This study was conducted to explore the ability and propensity to verbally deceive
others in children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We also explored
the relationships among lie-telling ability, false belief understanding as measured using a
standard battery of false belief tasks, and verbal mental age as measured using a
standardized test of language ability. To explore antisocial lie-telling ability, we used a
modified temptation resistance paradigm in which children were tempted to commit a
transgression in the experimenter’s absence and given the opportunity to tell a lie about
their transgression and to exercise semantic leakage control (SLC)—that is, to maintain
consistency between the lie and subsequent statements that they make. To explore
prosocial lie-telling ability, we used a modified undesirable gift paradigm in which
children were awarded an unattractive prize for winning a game and given the
opportunity to lie about liking the prize that the experimenter gave them. We found that
children with ASD, like typically developing children, can and do tell antisocial lies to
conceal a transgression, and prosocial lies in politeness settings. However, children with
ASD were less able than typically developing children to exercise SLC. Furthermore, we
found that, unlike in typically developing children, lie-telling ability in children with
ASD was not related to their false belief understanding. The pattern of relations among
lie-telling ability, false belief understanding, and verbal mental age are discussed with
respect to possible contentions regarding the underlying processes by which children with
ASD tell lies and succeed on false belief tasks.

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Co-Authorship
My supervisor, Dr. Elizabeth Kelley, and Dr. Kang Lee assume primary
responsibility for concocting the idea for the research reported in this thesis. I assume
shared responsibility for the conceptualization and primary responsibility for the design,
execution, and write-up of this thesis. Dr. Kelley assisted in all aspects of this thesis.

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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Elizabeth Kelley for her incredible
enthusiasm, support, and guidance over the past two years. I am extremely grateful to
have her as a supervisor and mentor and am thrilled to have the opportunity to continue
working with her and learning from her as I move forward in my graduate career.
I would also like to thank Dr. Kang Lee and Dr. Mark Sabbagh for taking the time
out of their busy schedules to offer invaluable insights and helpful feedback on this
project. I feel extremely lucky to have had such a talented and supportive group of
researchers on my thesis committee.
I also wish to thank my parents, Ellen and Joseph, my sister, Fiona, and my
boyfriend, Hay, for their continuing love and encouragement. Special thanks to Sevda
Bahtiyar and Laura O’Connell for their help in data collection and helpful comments, but
more importantly, their support and friendship.
Last but not least, I give my sincerest thanks to the families who generously
volunteered their time to participate in this study and the undergraduate students who
devoted many, many hours to working in ASD Studies lab. In particular, I would like to
thank Carolyn Bell, Ellen Drumm, Katie Ben-Aron, Layla Hall, and Rachel Leung for
their help in data collection and Monica Haberl for blind-coding the data. I would also
like to thank a former doctoral student of Dr. Kang Lee, Angela Evans, for training me on
the experimental paradigms and for her help in designing the coding scheme.

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Table of Contents
Chapter Page
1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................1
Deception in Children with ASD .............................................................................2
Lie-Telling Ability in Typically Developing Children ............................................3
Lie-Telling Ability and False Belief Understanding in Typically Developing
Children........................................................................................................6
Prosocial Lie-Telling Ability in Typically Developing Children ............................9
The Present Study ..................................................................................................10
2. Method .........................................................................................................................13
Participants .............................................................................................................13
Materials and Measures .........................................................................................15
General Cognitive Functioning ..................................................................15
General Language Ability ..........................................................................17
Autistic Symptomatology ..........................................................................20
Demographics ............................................................................................23
False Belief Understanding ........................................................................23
Antisocial Lie-Telling Ability ....................................................................26
Prosocial Lie-Telling Ability .....................................................................28
Procedure ...............................................................................................................30
3. Results ..........................................................................................................................32
Preliminary Analyses .............................................................................................32
Reliability Analysis ....................................................................................32
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Reliability of False Belief Task Battery .....................................................32
Order Effects ..............................................................................................33
Peeking Behaviour in the Temptation Resistance Paradigm .....................33
Desirability of the Bar of Soap in the Undesirable Gift Paradigm ............34
Group Differences ..................................................................................................35
False Belief Understanding ........................................................................35
Antisocial Lie-Telling Ability ....................................................................36
Prosocial Lie-Telling Ability .....................................................................38
Interrelations among Lie-Telling Ability, False Belief Understanding, and
VMA ..........................................................................................................39
Relationship between Lie-Telling Ability and VMA ................................40
Relationship between False Belief Understanding and VMA ..................43
Relationship between Lie-Telling Ability and False Belief
Understanding ................................................................................43
Relationship between Antisocial and Prosocial Lie-Telling Abilities .......44
4. Discussion ....................................................................................................................45
Can Children with ASD Tell Antisocial Lies? ......................................................45
Can Children with ASD Tell Prosocial Lies? ........................................................46
Is False Belief Understanding Related to Lie-Telling Abilities in Children with
ASD? ..........................................................................................................47
False Belief Understanding and Antisocial Lie-Telling Ability ................48
False Belief Understanding and Prosocial Lie-Telling Ability ..................53
Do Children with ASD Have a Rudimentary ToM? ..............................................54
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Future Directions ...................................................................................................55
Limitations .............................................................................................................56
Conclusions ............................................................................................................57
References Cited ................................................................................................................59
Appendices
A. Calling Script ................................................................................................................67
B. Reinforcer Survey .........................................................................................................70
C. Letter of Information .....................................................................................................71
D. Consent Form ................................................................................................................73
E. Demographics Questionnaire ........................................................................................75
F. False Belief Task Scripts ...............................................................................................80
G. Temptation Resistance Paradigm Script .......................................................................82
H. Undesirable Gift Paradigm Script .................................................................................84
I. Debriefing Script v1 .......................................................................................................86
J. Debriefing Script v2 .......................................................................................................88
K. Debriefing Handout.......................................................................................................90
L. Counterbalancing Sheet .................................................................................................94

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List of Tables
Table Page
1. Intercorrelations Among Antisocial and Prosocial Lie-Telling Ability, False Belief
Understanding, and Verbal Mental Age for the ASD and TD Groups ........................41
2. Intercorrelations Among SLC, False Belief Understanding, and Verbal Mental Age
for the ASD and TD Groups ........................................................................................42
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List of Figures
Figure Page
1. Mean Proportion Correct (+SE) in the ASD (n = 19) and TD (n = 30) Groups on First-
Order and Second-Order False Belief Tasks ...............................................................36
2. Percentage of Children in the ASD (n = 14) and TD (n = 13) Groups Who Gave
Themselves Away, Made an Irrelevant Statement, Used an Ineffective Strategy, and
Used an Effective Strategy in Response to the ‘Why’ Question: “Why do you think
so?” ..............................................................................................................................37
3. Percentage of Children in the ASD (n = 18) and TD (n = 30) Groups Who Peeked;
Told an Antisocial Lie (n = 15 and 15); Exercised SLC in Response to the ‘What’
Question (n = 14 and 13); Exercised At Least Some SLC in Response to the ‘Why’
Question (n = 14 and 13); and Told a Prosocial Lie (n = 18 and 22) ..........................38
4. Percentage of Children in the ASD (n = 18) and TD (n = 22) Groups Who Told the
Truth, Told an Unconvincing Lie, Told a Simple Lie, or Told a Convincing Lie in
Response to the Prosocial Lie Question: “Do you like the prize that I gave you?” ....39
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Though parents of young children may find the emergence of deceptive
behaviours and the ability to tell increasingly convincing and sophisticated lies
frustrating, lie-telling is nevertheless an important developmental milestone in a young
child’s life. The goal of telling a lie is to try to make someone else believe something that
the lie-teller does not believe is true. Lie-telling involves intentionally instilling a false
belief—something that the lie-teller believes to be false but may or may not be false in
reality—in the mind of another person (Lee, 2000); thus, it requires young children to
have at least a rudimentary ‘theory of mind’ (ToM). ToM is the ability to understand that
people have mental states such as knowledge and beliefs, that their own mental states
may differ from the lie recipient’s mental states, and that the lie recipient does not have
access to their own mental states (Talwar, Gordon, & Lee, 2007; Yirmiya, Solomonica-
Levi, & Shulman, 1996). In other words, without a rudimentary ToM, there would be no
motivation for one to attempt to manipulate the beliefs of another person. Lie-telling can
be seen as a real-world application of an understanding of others’ minds (Talwar & Lee,
2008b) and the emergence of lie-telling in young children can be taken as an indicator for
the presence of at least a rudimentary ToM (Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg, & Cohen,
2000; Sodian, 1994).
Many researchers have demonstrated that children with autism spectrum disorders
(ASD) have a deficit in ToM (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; Brent, Rios, Happé, &
Charman, 2004; Happé, 1995; Yirmiya, Erel, Shaked, & Solomonica-Levi, 1998).
Consistent with the ToM deficit in autism, parents of children with ASD report that
unlike their typically developing children, their autistic children do not tell lies (Baron-
Cohen, Tager-Flusberg, & Cohen, 1994). However, there are no published empirical
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