The ABCs of Deception: Do Young Children Understand Deception in the Same Way as Adults?

Most research suggests that it is not until age 4 that children understand deception as a means of creating a false belief. Yet children could have failed on these tasks because of either (a) conceptual problems (an inability to understand that deception is a means of creating a false belief), or (b) pragmatic problems (an inability to articulate an understanding of false belief) and task complexity (an inability to follow the narrative or make appropriate inferences). Three experiments were conducted to determine why children might fail deception tasks, and results indicated that (a) children were no better at understanding deception whether they were "active deceivers" or observers of a deceptive act, and (b) children's difficulty appeared to be associated with a conceptual deficiency (e.g., they could leave clues that would lead another to a possible belief but not a false belief).