Yesterday I took the 5th lecture in my online Intro to Psychology course. The lecture was titled “What it’s like to be a baby” and covered the basics of the development of complex thought. In part of the lecture, the professor talked about the development of the ability to lie/deceive. He pointed to a study done on young children where the cognitive psychologist took a toy the child wanted to play with, and one they didn’t, and placed them in front of the child. The psychologist had the child point at which toy they wanted, a “mean monkey?” would then take the toy the child wanted. This was run over and over again. Each time, the child would point to the toy they wanted, and that toy would be taken away. Originally it was though that this experiment showed that children are not smart enough to pick the other toy so that they can have the toy they actually want, modern cognitive and developmental psychologists, however, believe that the child understands that the monkey will take away the toy they want, they are just incapable of lying/deceiving (before the ages of 4-5). When I heard about this experiment, it reminded me of a specific situation when Lazer was around 4 years old. He was being bad in the car (screaming, hitting Aedan–I can’t remember why) and he dropped his pacifier. My older brother took his pacifier and told him that he could have it back if he promised to stop hurting Aedan. He refused to promise that and screamed and cried for his pacifier. My brother kept saying “All you have to do is promise that you wont hurt Aedan”, Lazer would not promise it. At the time I wondered why he wouldn’t just lie to get his pacifier, which he wanted so badly, back. I’d thought that he’d just lie, take his pacifier back, then hit Aedan again, but he could not lie. He knew that he could not promise that and he was unable to lie to get the thing he wanted. He also could not stop himself from screaming and hitting Aedan (this is evident of young children’s problems with inhibition that the professor talked about–once you do something it’s hard to stop/takes a lot of control that kids don’t have). This may be because he knew that if he got his pacifier back and then did not uphold the promise, he would loose it again, but it could also be because he wasn’t able to lie.