Two experiments tested two, three, and four year olds' ability to understand false beliefs. Results of both experiments support earlier claims that an understanding of false beliefs and deceptive ploys emerges at around age four. Two and three year olds can be led to produce such ploys but show no clear understanding of their effect. (GLR)

Although courts and legislators usually set legal standards that correspond to empirical knowledge of human behavior, recent developments in behavioral psychology have led courts to appreciate the limits and errors in consumer decision making. "Reasonable consumer" standards that are congruent with cognitive reality should be developed.…

Infidelity is a common issue with which distressed couples and their therapists grapple. However, there are no data on the efficacy of commonly used therapies to treat couples in which there has been an affair. In the present exploratory study, the authors examined the therapy outcomes of a sample of infidelity couples (n=19) who had participated…

Psychological assessments of competency-to-stand-trial (CST) referrals must consider whether the defendants' impairment is genuine or feigned. This study addressed feigning on the Evaluation of Competency to Stand Trial--Revised (ECST-R), a standardized interview designed for assessing dimensions of CST and screening for feigned CST. In…

Although the exponential growth of the Internet has made it easier than ever to carry out plagiarism, it has also made it much easier to detect. This paper gives an overview of the many different methods of detecting web-based plagiarism which are currently available, assessing practical matters such as cost, functionality and performance.…

Media literacy education helps individuals become discriminating consumers of health information. Informed consumers are less likely to purchase useless health products if informed of misleading and deceptive advertising methods. The purpose of this study was to conduct a content analysis of health-related TV infomercials. An instrument…

The transition period in Romania has generated a series of important changes, including the reforming of the Romanian tertiary education. This process has been accelerated after the signing of the Bologna treaty. Important changes were recorded in many of the quantitative aspects (such as number of student enrolled, pupil-student ratio etc) as…

Reading First is a $900-million-a-year project that offers states grants to improve reading instruction for children in kindergarten through third grade. However, Reading First is now awash in allegations of mismanagement and conflicts of interest. The Education Department's inspector general issued a report that declared that the program's…

Noting a dearth of research on the ethical use of evidence in forensic competitions, a case analysis details a speech delivered by a contestant who apparently borrowed both ideas and writing from another source. In a prize-winning speech, the contestant used source deception, plagiarism, and "pseudo" sources (attribution to sources…

Examined three- to five-year-old children's understanding of pretense and deception in folktales in which a villain deceived his victim by pretending to be someone else. Found that the three-year-olds were able to follow the pretense but were not able to grasp the false belief integral to the deception. (MOK)

Documents three problems with the behavioral adaption explanation (BAE) that, taken together, suggest that it cannot account for the probing effect, i.e., the finding that sources interrogatively probed appear more honest to message recipients than nonprobed sources. (TB)

Investigates vocal stress as an indicator of deception or truth telling, using descriptive, narrative, and emotionally eliciting questions in simulated job interviews with Chinese immigrants. Finds the validity of the vocal stress index as a measure of stress and discomfort limited to prepared lies and responses requiring an emotional response.…

Derives hypotheses concerning patterns of interaction that occur across time in truthful and deceptive conversations among undergraduate students. Examines the nature of adaptability and mutual influence in interaction, interpersonal deception theory and interaction adaptation theory. Finds that deceivers felt more anxious and were more concerned…

A study compared the ability of eight high-functioning children with autism and eight controls to understand the facial expressions of real and deceptive emotion. Children with autism were less able to indicate the real emotions that story characters felt, the deceptive emotions they expressed, or the social reasons prompting a deceptive facial…

Auditing school districts on a regular basis hasn't been part of the comptroller's job description in New York for 20 years. That began to change 18 months ago, when accusations arose about expenses made by a former administrator in Roslyn, a 3,300-student system in an affluent Long Island community. Questionable spending has come to light in more…