Cuando los niños usan las palabras para engañar: la mentira como instrumento al servicio del desarrollo de las habilidades de inferencia mentalista

Resumen

En este artículo se analiza la mentira como una manifestación lingüística del engaño, considerando los componentes comunes a ambas conductas y las particularidadespropias de la mentira. Se presentan y analizan diversos trabajos sobre la comprensión y producción de la mentira en el desarrollo ontogenético. Se analiza la conducta de mentira como instrumento social con un importante papel adaptativo de las conductas de engaño y mentira. También se presenta un análisis de la conducta de mentira—o de su ausencia—en personas con autismo y se interpreta este resultado en relación con otras habilidades de inferencia mentalista. Por último, se analiza la mentira en relación con las implicaciones que en ella tiene el proceso de atribución de estados mentales.

Abstract

Lying is viewed as the linguistic manifestation of deceit. The paper analyses which components are shared by these two behaviours and the particular characteristics of lying. Several studies on the comprehension and production of lying in ontogenetic development are reviewed. The adaptive role of lying and deceiving as social instruments is also discussed. This leads to analysing lying behavior—or its absence—in autistic children. Results are interpreted within the context of other mentalistic inference abilities. Finally, the implications of the process of attributing mental states on lying is analysed.

Extended Summary

The present article deals with the phenomenon of lying from different points of views. Initially, we analyse its relation with deceit behaviour, giving details of particular linguistic aspects of the human use of deceit, and some of its pragmatic implications related to communication principles.

A comparative analysis of lying and deceiving behaviours is undertaken with the aim of 1) pointing out both similarities and differences; 2) contributing relevant information to the debate from a phylogenetic as well as an ontogenetic perspective. The paper adopts a developmental viewpoint to analyses various empirical tasks assessing children's understanding and production of lies at different stages of their development. Moreover, it reviews several tasks which use different methods of assessment in an attempt to answer questions such as when and how children start lying.

Apart from several replies to these questions, the above task review enable us to analyse a wide range of aspects related to understanding and expressing lies; such as, moral judgement, factual comprehension, importance of perceptual information and certainty. Through some of these tasks we analyse the relationship between the development of children's abilities to produce and detect lies and the development of mentalist inferring abilities. In other words, children's theory of mind. We also evaluate lying behaviour as a social instrument, describing some recent cognitive theoretical models which proffer that deceit—and also lying—plays an important adaptive role. Lying behaviour and its marked absence in autistic persons is analysed in relation to both this adaptive role and the development of inferring one's own and others' mental states—known as Theory of Mind.

This absence of a natural production of lies and deceit, that is generic in autistic children and adults, is compared with their failure to complete successfully mental inference tasks both in experimental situations and in their daily routine. Finally, the implications of the process of attributing mental states on lies is discussed.

Palabras clave:

• Mentira
• engaño
• desarrollo
• teoría de la mente
• autismo
• adaptación

Keywords:

• Lie
• deceit
• development
• theory of mind
• autism
• adaptation