hi
let me ask the audience a question
did you ever lie as a child
if you did could you please raise your
hand
wow this is the most honest group of
people i've ever met
so for the last 20 years i've been
studying how children learn to tell lies
and today i'm going to show with you
some of the discoveries that we have
made
but to begin
i'm going to tell you a story from mr
richard massena who is my friend and the
elementary school principal
he got a phone call one day
the caller says mr messina my son johnny
will not come to school today because
he's sick
miss messina asks
who am i speaking to please
and the caller says
i am my father
so
this story
sums up
very nicely
three common beliefs we have about
children and lying
one
children only come to
tell lies after entering elementary
school
two children are poor liars we adults
can easily detect their lives
and three if children lie at a very
young age
there must be some character flaws with
them and they are going to become
pathological liars for life
well
it turns out
all the three beliefs are wrong
so
we have been playing guessing games with
children all over the world so here's an
example so in this game we ask children
to guess the numbers on the cards
and we tell them if they win the game
they are going to get a big prize
but in the middle of the game we make an
excuse and leave the room
and before we leave the room
we tell them not to peek at the cards
of course
we have hidden cameras in the room
to watch their every move
because the desire to the game is so
strong
more than
90 children would peak
as soon as we leave the room
the crucial question is
when we return and ask the children
whether or not they have peaked
were the children who picked confess
or lie about their transgression
we found that that regardless of gender
country religion
at two years of age
thirty percent lying
seventy percent tell the truth about
your transgression
at three years of age
fifty percent lie and fifty percent tell
the truth
at four years of age
more than eighty percent lying
and after four years of age
most children lie
so as you can see
lying is really a typical part of
development
and some children begin to tell lies as
young as two years of age
so now let's take a closer look at the
younger children
why
some but not all young children lie
as in cooking
you need good ingredients
to cook good food
and good lying requires two
key ingredients
the first key ingredient is theory of
mind or the mind reading ability
my reading is ability to know that
different people have a different
knowledge about the situation and the
ability to differentiate between what i
know and what you know
my reading is important for lying is
because the basis of lying is that i
know
you don't know what i know therefore i
can lie to you
the second key ingredient for good lying
is self-control
it is ability to control your speech
your facial expression and your body
language
so that you can tell a convincing lie
and we found
that those young children who have more
advanced
my reading and self-control abilities
tell lies earlier
and are more sophisticated liars
as turns out these two abilities are
also essential for all of us to function
well in our society
in fact deficits in mind reading and
self-control abilities are associated
with
serious developmental problems such as
adhd
and autism
so
if you discover your two-year-old is
telling his or her first lie
instead of being alarmed you should
celebrate
because
it signals that your child has arrived
at a new milestone of typical
development
now
are children poor liars
do you think you can easily detect their
lies
would you like to give a try
yes okay so i'm going to show you two
videos
in the videos the children are going to
respond to a researcher's question did
you peek
so try to tell me
which child is lying and which child is
telling the truth
so here's a child number one
are you ready
did you peek
no
and this is child number two
did you peek no
okay
if you think child number one is lying
please raise your hand
if you think child number two is lying
please raise your hand
okay so as a matter of fact
child number one is telling the truth
child number two is lying
looks like many of you are terrible
detectives so children's lives
now we have played a similar kind of
games
with
many many adults
from all walks of life
and we showed them many videos
in half the videos the children lied in
the other half of the videos children
told the truth
and let's find out how these adults
perform because there are as many liars
as truth tellers
so if you guess randomly
there's a 50 chance
you're going to get it right
so if your accuracy is around 50
it means you are terrible detectors of
children's lives
okay so let's start with the
undergrads and law school students who
typically have limited experience with
children no they cannot detect
children's lives their performance is
around chance
now how about
social workers and child protection
lawyers who work with children on a
daily basis can they detect children's
lives
no they cannot
what about judges
custom officers
and police officers who deal with liars
on a daily basis can they detect
children's lives
no they cannot
what about parents can parents detect
others children's lives
no they cannot
what about can parents detect their own
children's lives
no they cannot
so now you may ask
why
children's lives are so difficult to
detect
so let me illustrate this with my own
song nathan so this is his facial
expression when he lies
so when children lie
their facial expression is typically
neutral
however behind this neutral expression
the child is actually experiencing a lot
of emotions such as fear
guilt
shame and maybe a little bit of liar's
delight
unfortunately such emotions are either
fleeting
or hidden therefore is mostly invisible
to us
so in the last five years we have been
trying to figure out a way to reveal
these hidden emotions
then we made a discovery
we know that
underneath our facial skin there's a
rich network of blood vessels when we
experience different emotions our facial
blood flow changes subtly
and these
changes are regulated by the autonomous
system that is beyond our conscious
control
so by looking at
facial blood flow changes
we can reveal people's hidden emotions
unfortunately such emotion related
facial blood flow changes are too subtle
to detect by our naked eye
so to help us reveal people's facial
emotions
we have developed a new imaging
technology we call
transdermal optical imaging
to do so we use a regular video camera
to record people when people experience
various hidden emotions
and then
using our image processing technology we
can extract
transdermal images of facial blood flow
changes
and by looking at transdermal video
images
now we can easily see
transderm facial blood flow changes
associated with various hidden emotions
and using this technology we can now
reveal the hidden emotion associated
with lying and therefore detect people's
lives
we can do so non-invasively remotely
inexpensively with an accuracy at about
85 percent which is far better than
chess level
and in addition
we discovered a pinocchio effect
no not this pinocchio effect
this is the real pinocchio effect when
people lie
the facial blood flow on the cheeks
decreases and the facial blood flow on
the nose increases
of course
lying is not the only situation that
will evoke our hidden emotions
so then we ask ourselves
in addition to detecting lies
how can our technology be used
one application is in
education
for example using this technology we can
help this mathematics teacher to
identify the student in his classroom
who may experience high anxiety
about the topic he's teaching so that he
can help him
and also we can use this in healthcare
for example every day i skype my parents
who live thousands of miles away
and using this technology i can not only
find out what's going on in their lives
but also simultaneously monitor
their heart rate
their stress level their mood and
whether or not they are experiencing
pain
and perhaps in the future there are
risks for heart attack or hypertension
and you may ask
can we use this also to reveal
politicians
emotions
for example during a debate
well the answer is yes
using tv footages we could detect the
politicians heart rate
mood and stress and perhaps in the
future whether or not they are lying to
us
we can also use this in marketing
research for example to find out whether
or not people like certain consumer
products
we can even use it in dating so for
example if your date is smiling at you
this technology can help you to
determine whether she actually likes you
or she's just trying to be nice to you
and in this case
she's just trying to be nice to you
so
transdermal optical imaging technology
is at the very early stage of
development
many
new applications will come about that we
don't know today
however
one thing i know for sure is that
lying will never be the same again
thank you very much
you