The Ability to Deceive Appears in Infants Under One Year Old 0 11

The study involved parents of more than 750 children aged 0 to 47 months. It was found that about a quarter of infants display the simplest forms of dishonest behavior by the age of ten months. For example, they may pretend not to hear adults, hide toys, or secretly eat forbidden sweets. Some parents noted that their child begins to understand the very idea of deception as early as eight months.

Nearly half of the children who resorted to trickery once repeat such actions the very next day. By the age of two, deception becomes more conscious and manifests in actions or simple verbal reactions: a child may ignore requests to put away toys or deny having eaten chocolate. By the age of three, children begin to use more complex forms of deception involving exaggeration, understatement, and fabrications.

Professor Elena Hoika from the University of Bristol notes that deception is a natural stage of child development. According to co-author of the study Jennifer Soi from the University of Waterloo, the work helps to better understand the characteristics of this behavior, which had previously been studied mainly in adults.