撒谎并非一无是处

作为父母，教养孩子时总是告诫自己的孩子不要撒谎。但是多伦多大学的Lee最近撰写的一项研究表明，撒谎对认知有好处。

"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说，不论是家长还是老师，乃至整个社会，都很担心孩子撒谎以及撒谎后产生的不良后果。但实际上研究表明，一个人开始撒谎的年纪不同(或早或晚)，影响就大不相同。早学会撒谎的孩子，认知能力更强一些。

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和来自中国、新加坡和美国的学者一起完成了这项研究。根据实验，他们教42名中国学龄前儿童(还不会撒谎)如何玩一种“捉迷藏”游戏。

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.

这些孩子平均年龄在40个月，被分成了等人数、等性别的两组。在四天里，他们玩了这样一个游戏：他们把自己喜欢的小东西放在自己手里，然后让大人去猜在哪只手里。大人们必须根据小孩儿的描述来选择答案。

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.

如果孩子成功地骗过了成年人，他们就可以得到此物品;而为了赢得比赛，实验组的孩子会被教着如何去撒谎，对照组则不然。

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.

这项测试旨在测验出孩子们的执行力，其中包括“自我控制”和“自我思考”。这里的"自我思考"(也就是孩子们的心思)，是指了解他人意图的能力。实验组的孩子们无疑比对照组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.

研究人员在《实验儿童心理学杂志》上写道:"只要接受短短几天的教导，孩子们很快就学会了欺骗，并从中获得了直接的认知益处。“

"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."

”更广泛地来说，这些研究说明，那些看上去不恰当的人类社会行为(比如撒谎)，都能提高人的认知力。因为若要完成这些行为，一个人必须有着追求目标的毅力、解决问题的决心，以及稳定的精神状态。"

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一直在研究儿童说谎的原因和方式，但是他和他的合作者说，这篇文章是第一个能证明"学会欺骗能加强幼儿的认知能力"的证据。

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

那这是否就意味着，父母一辈应抛弃传统的礼教观念，并教孩子们去撒谎呢?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说：“我认为这样并不妥;但让他们学着玩一些类似的游戏，也不是个坏主意。”

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."

孩子们在七岁前就已经会撒谎了，有的甚至两岁就会骗人了。Lee第一次发现自己的孩子撒谎是他14个月大的时候，明明不饿，却还知道“张牙舞爪”地向他们讨奶喝，不给就哭闹，一旦他走到冰箱那里去拿牛奶了，孩子竟然开始咯咯笑了。

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.

他说，撒谎是人成长路上的一部分，越早学会，反而越好。你撒谎时必须会自我控制和自我思考，而这两点又是以后人在社会中生存下去必须掌握的认知技能。