Research project: Cognitive building blocks of lie detection
Lying is very common in social interactions among people. Being able to detect lies is therefore important for social functioning. Despite this, adults are generally not very good at detecting lies. In children, an understanding of truth and lies gradually develops during the school-age years and seems to require an understanding of other people’s beliefs and intentions. Children’s lie detection abilities thus seem to develop in tandem with their theory of mind abilities, but how these two abilities exactly interact in the course of children’s development, and what other factors are important, is still an open question. Furthermore, it is still unknown whether the ability to detect lies can be enhanced, which could help children and adults to maneuver in a world in which the truth of utterances is not always evident.

This interdisciplinary project studies how children develop the ability to detect other people’s lies. This ability not only requires adequate verbal skills and second-order theory of mind reasoning skills, but also the skills to construct and actively maintain a representation of one’s own knowledge, the knowledge of the speaker, and reality. As a starting point, existing computational cognitive models of sentence interpretation and theory of mind reasoning will be used, which will be integrated and expanded with representations of the knowledge involved. By running computational simulations of the resulting cognitive model, predictions will be generated about the timing of the components involved in sentence interpretation, theory of mind reasoning, and lie detection. These predictions will be empirically tested in psycholinguistic experiments with children and adults.

The project will be supervised by Prof. Petra Hendriks (Faculty of Arts), Prof. Barteld Kooi (Faculty of Philosophy), and Prof. Rineke Verbrugge (Faculty of Science and Engineering & Faculty of Philosophy).

Description of the PhD trajectory:

The successful applicant is committed to conducting independent and original scientific research, to report on this research in international publications and presentations, and to present the final results of the research in a PhD dissertation. The PhD student participates in local, national and international training activities, including summer schools and conferences, to maximally develop their potential.

As a member of the Graduate School of Philosophy, the PhD candidate may participate in courses, seminars and summer schools organized by the Dutch graduate school Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap (LOT), The Netherlands Research School for Information and Knowledge Systems (SIKS), or the Groningen Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences (BCN).

Your qualifications are:

- a Master's degree in artificial intelligence, logic, philosophy, linguistics or a related discipline, with an excellent academic record (GPA: min. 8/10; MA thesis: min. 8/10). A Research Master or other two-year Master programme is preferred
- experience with at least two of the following four research domains: (1) computational cognitive modeling, (2) psycholinguistic experimentation, (3) dynamic epistemic logic, (4) language development
- proven research abilities and affinity with the research topic
- excellent command of English and good academic writing skills.

Fixed-term contract: 48 months.

The PhD scholarship programme:

Information about the legal and financial framework of the PhD scholarship programme can be found here: https://www.rug.nl/education/phd-programmes/phd-scholarship-programme/

Please study the conditions carefully before applying.

Faculty of Philosophy

Since its foundation in 1614, the University of Groningen has established an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative university offering high-quality teaching and research. Its 36,000 students are encouraged to develop their own individual talents through challenging study and career paths. The University of Groningen is an international center of knowledge: it belongs to the best research universities in Europe and is allied with prestigious partner universities and networks worldwide.
The Graduate School of Philosophy (GSPh) is part of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Groningen and closely linked to the Groningen Research Institute for Philosophy (GRIPh). The GRIPh is a high-ranking and very competitive research institute that belongs to the absolute top within the Netherlands as well as world-wide.