Correspondence in children's self-report: Tacting and manding aspects.
Preschoolers’ self-reports are governed by whatever consequence is in place—reward accuracy and you get the truth, reward falsehood and you get lies.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked preschoolers to play with toys and then tell an adult what they did.
Next the adult gave stickers for accurate reports, then later gave stickers for wrong reports, and finally returned to giving stickers only for true reports.
This ABAB design showed whether the kids’ words matched their actions under each rule.
What they found
When accurate reports earned stickers, children told the truth almost every time.
When wrong reports earned stickers, false reports jumped.
Truth-telling returned as soon as accuracy again produced stickers, proving the words were controlled by reinforcement, not habit.
How this fits with other research
Iwata et al. (1990) ran the same toy-play check but let children pick what to say; they still saw high truth-telling only when accuracy paid off.
Sauter et al. (2020) tried a short moral story instead of stickers; honesty rose briefly then faded, showing stories alone can’t beat direct reinforcement.
Together the three papers form a clear line: preschool self-reports follow the payoff, not the pep-talk.
Why it matters
If you want reliable self-report from young clients—about toileting, food eaten, or peer hits—first arrange an immediate payoff for accurate telling.
Skip lectures; deliver a token, sticker, or praise the moment the child’s words match what you saw.
Then probe accuracy often and keep the contingency in place so truth keeps paying off.
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Join Free →Watch the client play, then hand a token only if the child’s verbal summary matches what you recorded—do this for five trials and graph the match.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Four boys and 4 girls (3 to 5 years old) played with as many as three toys chosen from a set of six, and were then asked whether they played with each of the toys. After a baseline in which all children showed high levels of correspondence between reported and actual behavior, reports of play were differentially reinforced, first in an individual and then in a social context. Two children in the individual condition began to report play with all six toys, even though no more than three toys had been played with. When reports of play were reinforced in a group context, 5 children reported play with all six toys. When correspondence was subsequently reinforced, virtually complete correspondence returned and was maintained in a third noncontingent reinforcement condition. Correspondence and lack of correspondence were discussed in terms of self-tacting and distorted tacting or manding.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1989 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1989.51-361