When children aren't more logical than adults: An empirical investigation of lying by falsely implicating

Studies on whether lying, as opposed to merely deceiving, is possible with untruthful implicatures have found conflicting evidence. Here, we present two experiments in which we investigated whether untruthful implicatures are judged as lies and the alleged difference between untruthful generalized and particularized conversational implicatures. Furthermore, we investigated untruthful implicatures in language acquisition. Our results show first that false implicatures are categorized as lies, but also that participants differentiate between false asserted content and false implicatures. Second, there is no contrast between PCIs and GCIs in either truthful or untruthful usage. Third, our results reveal an overall similar performance across all three tested age groups (5–6 years, 8–9 years, adults), showing that inferred content is accessible earlier than originally thought. We argue that these results are due to the child-oriented material as well as the high relevance of the implicatures in our experiment, and that previous findings in conflict with our own are caused by children's pragmatic tolerance. •In an experimental setting, untruthful implicatures are judged as lies.•Speakers differentiate between false asserted content and false implicatures.•Untruthful generalized and particularized implicatures are judged alike.•If the test design is appropriate, children (5–9 years) compute implicatures as adults.