Grant: Operating Grant

Conduct disorder is one of the most commonly diagnosed conditions in child mental health centers in North America. While some children already meet clinical diagnostic criteria for Conduct Disorder before the age of 10, many display severe, yet subclinical, symptoms such as fighting, shoplifting, and lying that are yet to meet criteria. Left untreated in early childhood, these early conduct problems place the child at risk for developing full blown Conduct Disorder later on. The limited existing evidence regarding lying in children with conduct problems comes primarily from hearsay reports. The current research program will address this significant gap by using experimental methods to systematically investigate lying behaviors of children with severe conduct problems. We will capitalize on both our unprecedented access to a large population of children between the ages of 6 and 10 with severe conduct problems and our unique expertise and extensive knowledge of the development of lie-telling. In contrast to previous studies that have treated lying as a unitary behavior, we will examine how children with conduct problems lie for prosocial and antisocial purposes, and establish whether and how their lies differ from those of typically developing children. We will also investigate verbal and nonverbal cues associated with children's deception as well as cognitive and social factors affecting pro- and anti-social lying. We will test the hypothesis that children with conduct problems will display a developmental trajectory opposite from that of typically developing children, displaying more antisocial lies and fewer prosocial lies with increased age. Results from this five-year, large scale study will greatly enhance understanding of the development of lying in children with conduct problems, provide new insights regarding their honesty-dishonesty profiles, and help develop more comprehensive assessment and intervention tools for children with conduct problems.