Let me inform you how to tell a convincing story: CBCA and reality monitoring scores as a function of age, coaching, and deception

The first aim of this experiment was to examine whether being informed about a method of detecting deception called Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) would increase participants' CBCA scores when deceptive so that they might then be classified as truthful. The second aim was to investigate whether Reality Monitoring could be used as an alternative tool for verbal lie detection. The third aim was to examine whether participants' social skills (social anxiety, self-monitoring, and social adroitness) affected their CBCA scores. Participants (aged 6-8, 11-12, 14-15, and undergraduates) participated in a "rubbing the blackboard" event. In a subsequent interview they told the truth or lied about the event, after they were or were not taught some CBCA criteria. Truth-tellers obtained higher CBCA scores than liars, and those who were informed about CBCA obtained higher scores than those who were not, except for the 6-8 year-olds. CBCA scores were also significantly correlated with social skills. Finally, Reality Monitoring was a useful alternative to CBCA for distinguishing between liars and truth-tellers.