DEVELOPMENTAL

A critical evaluation of the following news article:
Children with good memories 'tell better porkies'
published on 20 June 2015 in bbc.co.uk
Student ID: 28975987
Psychology























The following essay will present a critical analysis of a newspaper article
reporting some important findings in a research that creates a relation
between memory and children's lying behavior. The essay will provide a
brief summary of both the article, and the original piece of research,
followed by a critical evaluation of the news coverage, that is to say
whether the article accurately described and presented the findings or not.
At the end, the original research will be analyzed as well.

The writing titled 'Investigating the role of working memory in childhood
verbal deception' tries to establish a relation between the performance of
children's verbal working memories, and their lying behaviors. The working
memory is defined as the 'ability to process multiple pieces of
information, continually update memory contents with incoming stimuli, and
recall appropriate information' (Baddeley, 1996; Cowan, 2006; Engle,
Tuholski, Laughlin, & Conway, 1999; Lustig, May, & Hasher, 2001; Miyake,
Friedman, Rettinger, Shah, & Hegarty, 2001). Cited in Alloway, T. P.,
McCallum, F., Alloway, R. G., & Hoicka, E. (2015). In this sense, the
verbal working memory would be the one that deals with recalling and
processing verbal stimuli. According to this research, 114 children, aged
6-7 years old, were part of an experiment that measured their verbal and
visuospatial memory with some practical tests, and their lying behavior by
placing the children in a position in which they could decide whether to
deliberately lie or not. The results showed that there was a strong
relation between the verbal working memory, and the peeking behavior; those
children who obtained a better performance in the verbal memory tests
(could remember a higher number of words) were coincidently the ones rated
as 'good liars' that is to say, they were able to lie, and cover their lie
track. The researches explain that this is due to the fact that lying is
related to the language skills. Alloway, et al (2015).

Coherently to the journal, the article reports that children with good
verbal memories 'tell better porkies' because when it comes to lying, the
verbal information shows to be much more important than the visuospatial
information. It is relevant to indicate that, both in the research and in
the newspaper, it is mentioned that even though there is a link between
verbal memory and deceiving behavior, this does not mean that the 'good
liars' are less good at visual tests. In fact, it is highlighted that in
the visual aspect, both good and bad liars showed the same results.

Regarding the news coverage, the article it is quite descriptive when
presenting the relevance of the verbal memory in the children's ability to
lie, putting emphasis on the fact that language skills are essential for
deceiving. It briefly summarizes the dynamics of the experiment carried
out, as seen in line 5 and 6 of the article, where it is explained that the
methodology to test children's memories was through a list of words to be
remembered. Another strong point, is that the article indicates that only a
quarter of the children peeked on the lying test, which shows that even
when there is a relation between children's ability to lie and their verbal
working memory, the sample was not very representative. Thus, it can be
said that the news article does not attempt to deceive the reader with
superficial information, but presents all the important details of the
research. Nevertheless, there is one important limitation; the article
does not define what being a 'good liar' means.

Concerning the original research, it can be seen that the researches
employed recognition and recall tests, which are commonly used tests to
measure the children's memory according to Slater, A., & Bremner, J. G.
(2003) 'Two common tests of memory are recognition and recall. After a
person has been presented with study items or an event has occurred, they
might be asked to identify the items they have been exposed to'. This
methodology could be considered trustable as it is employed by most of
researches on the topic, however it is important to focus not only on the
procedure, but also in the context in which the experiment is carried out;
the results showed that a quarter of the children who had previously
obtained superior results in the verbal memory test, peeked the answers of
the question, and lied about it. As a result, the researchers claimed that
there was a link between their memories and their lie-telling behavior.
However, they did not consider among their limitations that the pressure of
the context 'having to answer to strangers' might have led the children to
lie 'The pressures the child faces might lead to compliance as well as
deception'. Slater, A., & Bremner, J. G. (2003). Another important
limitation left out by the researchers, was the fact that if the children
answered the questions to both the trivia games and the lying test in the
same place they took them, it could have biased the results, since being in
the same place activates their memory retrieval 'Memory retrieval is
strongly influenced by context. The retrieval of a memory may be
facilitated when the conditions prevalent at the time of retrieval parallel
those that existed at the time of the original encoding'. Slater, A., &
Bremner, J. G. (2003). In other words, it could have been easier for the
children to remember, only by being at the same place all the time.

As a conclusion, it is possible to say that the news article reported
accurately reported the original piece of research; it included the major
facts and implications highlighted by the researches. At the same time, the
research exposed the important relevance of the verbal working memory in
the lie-telling behavior of children aged 6-7. However, both writings
presented some flaws; the news article did not explain what a good or bad
liar means, which could be a little bit misleading. On the other hand, the
research presents limitations in terms of the context, which were not
considered.

REFERENCES



Alloway, T. P., McCallum, F., Alloway, R. G., & Hoicka, E. (2015). Liar,
liar, working memory on fire: investigating the role of working memory in
childhood verbal deception. Journal of experimental child psychology, 137,
30-38.



Slater, A., & Bremner, J. G. (Eds.). (2003). An introduction to
developmental psychology. Wiley-Blackwell.





























Self-assessment critical review feedback sheet



"Student number " 28975987 "
" " "
"Paper title "A critical evaluation of the following news article: "
" "Children with good memories 'tell better porkies' "
" "published on 20 June 2015 in bbc.co.uk "


" "18/0 "
" "(E-) "
"Notable "Not very coherent / cohesive "
"weakness "Ideas not well developed "
" "Shallow analysis. "
"Grade "C – C+ "