Academic cheating in early childhood: Role of age, gender, personality, and self-efficacy.

The current study investigated the association of children's age, gender, ethnicity, Big Five personality traits, and self-efficacy with their academic cheating behaviors. Academic cheating is a rampant problem that has been documented in adolescents and adults for nearly a century, but our understanding of the early development and factors influencing academic cheating is still weak. Using Zoom, the current study recruited children aged 4 to 12 years (N = 388), measured their cheating behaviors through six tasks simulating academic testing scenarios, and assessed their Big Five personality traits and self-efficacy through a modified Berkeley Puppet Interview paradigm, as well as age and gender. We found that children cheated significantly less with increased age and that boys cheated significantly more than girls. However, neither Big Five personality traits nor self-efficacy were significantly correlated with children's cheating. These findings suggest that academic cheating is a developing issue from early to middle childhood and that factors such as gender socialization may play a role in such development. Personal characteristics such as personality traits and self-efficacy may undergo additional development before their associations with cheating become robust, as reported in the adult literature.

Fade In, Fade Out: Do Shifts in Visual Perspective Predict the Consistency of Real-World Memories?

Memories of our personal past are not exact accounts of what occurred. Instead, memory reconstructs the past in adaptive-though not always faithful-ways. Using a naturalistic design, we asked how the visual perspective adopted in the mind's eye when recalling the past-namely, an "own eyes" versus "observer" perspective-relates to the stability of autobiographical memories. We hypothesized that changes in visual perspective over time would predict poorer consistency of memories. Young adults (N = 178) rated the phenomenology of and freely recalled self-selected memories of everyday events at two time points (10 weeks apart). Multilevel linear modeling revealed, as expected, that greater shifts in visual perspective over time predicted lower memory consistency, particularly for emotional details. Our results offer insight into the factors that predict the fidelity of memories for everyday events. Moreover, our results may elucidate new metrics that are useful in interpreting eyewitness testimony or experiences relayed in clinical contexts.