Somewhere I picked up the idea that autistic children didn’t lie very often. Long ago I realized my two kids on the spectrum had no trouble telling lies — though they weren’t always very good at them.
Today I decided to check out the academic literature. This sounds right …
Exploring the Ability to Deceive in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders - Springer (outrageously $$)
We found that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), like typically developing children, can and do tell antisocial lies (to conceal a transgression) and white lies (in politeness settings). However, children with ASD were less able than typically developing children to cover up their initial lie; that is, children with ASD had difficulty exercising semantic leakage control—the ability to maintain consistency between their initial lie and subsequent statements. Furthermore, unlike in typically developing children, lie-telling ability in children with ASD was not found to be related to their false belief understanding…
FWIW I’m a lousy liar too. Indeed I’m so bad at it that I very rarely consciously lie. Maybe autistic adults learn that they’re bad liars and adopt a similar policy. Which may explain where the original misconception came from.
2 comments:
The ability to lie starts with the intelligence to recognize the difference between "what is" and "what should be". In my limited experience with kids who are developing with some kind of ASD deficits, that intelligence is clearly present even if the conscious control of facial expressions is limited or odd. This same kind of recognition, BTW is critical to telling jokes or finding humor in situations. It was his sense of humor that first tipped me off that a certain nephew was not as disabled as I at first thought.
My #2 is like that -- very funny, esp with wordplay.
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