Recognition of mistakes and deceits in communicative interactions

The aim of the study is to investigate the ability to recognize mistakes and deceits in communicative interactions. Our assumptions are that (1) on the basis of the mental representations involved it is possible to predict difference in difficulty of recognition for mistakes and deceits, and (2) on the basis of the inferential load involved it is possible to predict difference in difficulty of recognition for simple and complex mistakes, as well as for simple and complex deceits. Furthermore, we improved our account of the ability to recognize mistakes and deceits by presenting several assumptions concerning this ability's relation with mindreading, attention capacity, and verbal span. As failures in recognition of mistakes and deceits are more likely to occur in young children, we validated our predictions with one experiment on 300 children aged 4–11 years. The results of the experiment confirmed all the predictions except that concerning simple deceits versus complex deceits. Indeed, children tend to recognize complex deceits more easily than simple deceits. We interpret this result in terms of the complexity of the mental representations and processes involved in communicative interactions as a cue for suspicion and for searching for possible deceitful intentions of the speaker.