【听演讲学英语】趣科学：测谎研究—关于孩子爱撒谎，那些大人们还不知道的事

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Kang Lee: Can youreally tell if a kid is lying?

With aninternational team based at the University of Toronto, Kang Lee investigates theneurological and social basis of emerging social behaviors in young children.His two­-pronged research focuses first on how and when children develop thecapacity to lie, to detect lies and to feel guilty about it afterwards. Thesecond focus of Lee's research is facial recognition, which has led torevelations of when children develop the ability to distinguish races.

Section 1:

So for the last20 years, I've been studying how children learn to tell lies. And today, I'mgoing to share with you some of the discoveries we have made. Three commonbeliefs we have about children and lying: One, children only come to tell liesafter entering elementary school. Two, children are poor liars. We adults caneasily detect their lies. And three, if children lie at a very young age, theremust be some character flaws with them, and they are going to becomepathologicalliars for life. Well, it turns out all of the three beliefs are wrong.

We have beenplaying guessing games with children all over the world. But in the middle ofthe game, we make an excuse and leave the room. Because the desire to win thegame is so strong, more than 90 percent of children willpeekas soon aswe leave the room. We found that regardless of gender, country, religion, afterfour years of age, most children lie. So as you can see, lying is really atypical part of development. And some children begin to tell lies as young astwo years of age.

Vocabulary:

Pathological,peek

Section 2:

So now, let'stake a closer look at the younger children. Why do some but not all youngchildren lie? The first key ingredient is theory of mind, or the mind-readingability. Mind reading is important for lying because the basis of lying is thatI know you don't know what I know. Therefore, I can lie to you. The second keyingredient for good lying is self-control. It is the ability to control yourspeech, your facial expression and your body language, so that you can tell aconvincing lie.

And we foundthat those young children who have more advanced mind-reading and self-controlabilities tell lies earlier and are moresophisticatedliars. As itturns out, these two abilities are also essential for all of us to functionwell in our society. In fact, deficits in mind-reading and self-controlabilities are associated with serious developmental problems, such as ADHD andautism. 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 yourchild has arrived at a new milestone of typical development.

Vocabulary:

Sophisticated

Section 3:

So when childrenlie, their facial expression is typically neutral. However, behind this neutralexpression, the child is actually experiencing a lot of emotions, such as fear,guilt, shame and maybe a little bit of liar's delight. Unfortunately, suchemotions are either fleeting or hidden. Therefore, it's mostly invisible to us.So in the last five years, we have been trying to figure out a way to revealthese hidden emotions.

Then we made adiscovery. We know that underneath our facial skin, there's a rich network ofblood vessels. When we experience different emotions, our facial blood flowchangessubtly. So to help us reveal people's facial emotions, we havedeveloped a new imaging technology we call "transdermal opticalimaging."

Of course, lyingis not the only situation that willevokeour hidden emotions. So thenwe asked ourselves, in addition to detecting lies, how can our technology beused? One application is in education. And also we can use this in health care.We can also use this in marketing research. We can even use it in dating. Sotransdermal optical imaging technology is at a very early stage of development.Many new applications willcome aboutthat we don't know today. However,one thing I know for sure is that lying will never be the same again.

Vocabulary:

subtle,noninvasive, evoke, come about