A new wave of research on adults’ ability in detecting children’s lies

There is a growing corpus of research showing that children can lie convincingly and that adults’ accuracy in identifying children’s deceit is not terribly impressive (Vrij, 2002). However, it should be acknowledged that many studies on adults’ ability in detecting children’s lies are of rather limited forensic relevance. For example, children are seldom asked to lie about self-experienced events. Furthermore, the paradigmatic task for the adult liecatcher is a rather static one; to assess a short video clip showing a child being interviewed once about a fictitious event.