The research in the lab focus on 3 key issues in child social development:

• Children’s truth-telling and lie-telling
• Children’s eyewitness testimony
• Children’s verbal and non-verbal communication

Children’s truth-telling and lie-telling

The first focus is on the development of children’s understanding of the concepts of truth and lies and their actual truth-telling and lie-telling behaviour. Our research examines how children come to grips with the concepts and moral implications of lying, whether children are gullible or they are able to detect others’ lies, and whether children can tell convergent lies in various social situations. We also examine the cognitive-social-cultural factors that affect children’s acquisition of conception and moral knowledge about lying and their ability to detect/tell lies successfully.

Specifically, Dr. Talwar has focused on verbal deception in children to investigate the relationship between social-cognition and action. Specific research interests are:

• The relationship between children’s moral knowledge and behaviour
• Theory-of-mind understanding and behaviour
• Expressive display rule knowledge and behaviour

Children’s eyewitness testimony

The second focus is on issues related to child witness testimony. Our research examines the veracity and accuracy of child witness reports for theirs and other’s behaviour. Our studies have included examination of the competency examination and children’s behaviour, children’s reports for repeated events, children’s reports of stressful events, and children’s reports for other’s transgressions. We also study adult’s perceptions and beliefs of child witness credibility as well as their ability to detect true and false reports.

Children’s verbal and non-verbal communication

The third focus is on children’s verbal and non-verbal communication. Our research examines children’s understanding and use of expressive display rules. Specifically, we have examined children’s ability to use display rules in different social situations, for example politeness situations, and situations in which a misdeed has been committed. Our research involves examining children’s abilities to co-ordinate both their verbal expressive behaviour and their non-verbal expressive behaviour in these unique social situations.