撒謊并非一無是處

作為父母，教養(yǎng)孩子時總是告誡自己的孩子不要撒謊。但是多倫多大學的Lee最近撰寫的一項研究表明，撒謊對認知有好處。

"As parents and teachers – and society as a whole – we always worry that if a kid lies there will be terrible consequences," Lee says. "But it turns out there is a big difference between kids who lie earlier and those who lie later. The kids who lie earlier tend to have much better cognitive abilities."

Lee說，不論是家長還是老師，乃至整個社會，都很擔心孩子撒謊以及撒謊后產生的不良后果。但實際上研究表明，一個人開始撒謊的年紀不同(或早或晚)，影響就大不相同。早學會撒謊的孩子，認知能力更強一些。

Lee, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and his co-authors in China, Singapore and the United States, based their findings on an experiment in which they asked 42 preschool-aged children in China – who showed no initial ability to lie – how to play a hide-and-seek game.

安大略教育研究院(Ontario Institute for Studies in Education)的Lee和來自中國、新加坡和美國的學者一起完成了這項研究。根據實驗，他們教42名中國學齡前兒童(還不會撒謊)如何玩一種“捉迷藏”游戲。

They were split into two groups with an equal number of boys and girls, with an average age of about 40 months. Over four days, they played a game in which they hid a treat, such as popcorn, from an adult in one hand. The grown-up had to choose the hand that the child indicated.

這些孩子平均年齡在40個月，被分成了等人數、等性別的兩組。在四天里，他們玩了這樣一個游戲：他們把自己喜歡的小東西放在自己手里，然后讓大人去猜在哪只手里。大人們必須根據小孩兒的描述來選擇答案。

If the child successfully deceived the adult, they got to keep the treat. The experimental group of kids was taught how to lie in order to win the game while the control group was not.

如果孩子成功地騙過了成年人，他們就可以得到此物品;而為了贏得比賽，實驗組的孩子會被教著如何去撒謊，對照組則不然。

On standardized tests used to measure executive function, including self-control and "theory of mind" – the capacity to understand another person's intentions and beliefs – the kids who were taught deception out-performed the control group.

這項測試旨在測驗出孩子們的執(zhí)行力，其中包括“自我控制”和“自我思考”。這里的"自我思考"(也就是孩子們的心思)，是指了解他人意圖的能力。實驗組的孩子們無疑比對照組的孩子完成的更出色。

"With just a few days of instruction, young children quickly learned to deceive and gained immediate cognitive benefits from doing so," the researchers write in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

研究人員在《實驗兒童心理學雜志》上寫道:"只要接受短短幾天的教導，孩子們很快就學會了欺騙，并從中獲得了直接的認知益處。“

"More generally," the authors add, "these findings support the idea that even seemingly negative human social behaviors may confer cognitive benefits when such behaviors call for goal pursuing, problem solving, mental state tracking, and perspective taking."

”更廣泛地來說，這些研究說明，那些看上去不恰當的人類社會行為(比如撒謊)，都能提高人的認知力。因為若要完成這些行為，一個人必須有著追求目標的毅力、解決問題的決心，以及穩(wěn)定的精神狀態(tài)。"

Lee has been studying how and why kids lie for more than two decades, but he and his co-writers say this article is "the first evidence that learning to deceive causally enhances cognitive skills in young children."

Lee一直在研究兒童說謊的原因和方式，但是他和他的合作者說，這篇文章是第一個能證明"學會欺騙能加強幼兒的認知能力"的證據。

Does that mean parents should throw out conventional wisdom and actually teach their kids to lie? Not exactly.

那這是否就意味著，父母一輩應拋棄傳統(tǒng)的禮教觀念，并教孩子們去撒謊呢?并非如此。

"I don't think that would be a good idea," Lee says, "but it's not a bad idea to let them play these kinds of deceptive games."

Lee說：“我認為這樣并不妥;但讓他們學著玩一些類似的游戲，也不是個壞主意。”

Children have been found to be capable of fibbing before they are seven years old, and some as early as two. He caught his own son lyingfor the first time at 14 months. He had taught him some American sign language, and their son gestured for more milk although he wasn't hungry. "We ran over to the fridge to get milk and he went, 'Ha ha ha!' He started to laugh."

孩子們在七歲前就已經會撒謊了，有的甚至兩歲就會騙人了。Lee第一次發(fā)現自己的孩子撒謊是他14個月大的時候，明明不餓，卻還知道“張牙舞爪”地向他們討奶喝，不給就哭鬧，一旦他走到冰箱那里去拿牛奶了，孩子竟然開始咯咯笑了。

Lying is a normal part of growing up, Lee says – and the earlier one learns to deceive, the better. "When you look at the two skills important for lying [self-control and theory of mind]...these are fundamental cognitive skills that humans must have to survive in society," he says.

他說，撒謊是人成長路上的一部分，越早學會，反而越好。你撒謊時必須會自我控制和自我思考，而這兩點又是以后人在社會中生存下去必須掌握的認知技能。