Children who benefit from a good memory are much better at covering up lies, researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered. They might stop trusting you 
 
 • Lying children will grow up to be successful citizens 
 
 For the study, children aged six and seven years old were given the opportunity to peek at the answers on the back of a card during a trivia game. It's interesting to know why some children are able to tell more porkies than others Dr Elena Hoicka, University of Sheffield 
 
 Using hidden cameras during a question-and-answer game, they were able to identify the children who peeked at the answer to a fictitious question, even though they were told not to. Further questioning, including about the colour of the answer on the cards, allowed researchers to identify who was a good liar, by lying to both entrapment questions; or a bad liar, by lying about one or none of the entrapment questions. Writing in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, researchers from the Universities of North Florida, Sheffield and Stirling, recruited 114 children from four British schools for their experiment. Children who were good liars performed better in tests of verbal memory - the number of words they could remember. In separate memory tests, the good liars showed they had a better working memory for words - but they didn't show any evidence of being better at remembering pictures (visuo-spatial memory). They believe it is because it takes a lot of thought and memory skills to keep track of lies told so that they do not slip up and give the game away. As a result, children who possessed better memories and could keep track of lots of information were able to successfully make and maintain a cover story for their lie. The researchers said this was because lying involves keeping track of lots of verbal information, whereas keeping track of images is less important. “While parents are usually not too proud when their kids lie, they can at least be pleased to discover that when their children are lying well, it means their children are becoming better at thinking and have good memory skills,” said Dr Elena Hoicka, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Psychology, said 
 
 “We already know that adults lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes, so it’s interesting to know why some children are able to tell more porkies than others. "We already know that adults lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes, so it's interesting to know why some children are able to tell more porkies than others." We’ll now be looking to move the research forward to discover more about how children first learn to lie.” 
 
 • Lying is an "important social skill" for young children 
 
 • Lying to your kids? Dr Tracy Alloway, project lead from the University of North Florida, said: "This research shows that thought processes, specifically verbal working memory, are important to complex social interactions like lying because the children needed to juggle multiple pieces of information while keeping the researcher’s perspective in mind.” 
 
 The results were published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
– Children shouldn't lie to their elders, right? Fair enough, but a new study says the best child liars possess superior verbal working memory skills, the BBC reports. Researchers at the University of Sheffield gathered more than 100 children, ages six and seven, and told them not to peek at answers about a fictitious cartoon character on the back of a card (meanwhile, a hidden camera was on them the whole time), according to a press release. Then researchers questioned the children, spotted the liars, and evaluated their ability to lie in the face of two entrapment questions. The "best" liars fibbed each time, while poor liars did it only once or not at all. Writing in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, researchers say they were most impressed by a child's ability to keep up a strong cover story for any falsehood. In memory tests that followed, the talented liars showed a more powerful working memory with words, but not with pictures. This is likely because covering up for lies involves juggling a lot of verbal information and "keeping the researcher's perspective in mind," a project leader tells the Telegraph. Parents may not want kids to lie, but "when their children are lying well, it means their children are becoming better at thinking and have good memory skills," says developmental psychologist Elena Hoicka. "We already know that adults lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes, so it's interesting to know why some children are able to tell more porkies than others." One possible surprise from the study: Only 25% of the children cheated by peeking at the answer. (Another recent study found an interesting consequence of lying on Facebook.)