Victoria Talwar
Biographic Data
| ID | 114073 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Victoria Talwar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Victoria |
| FAMILY NAME | Talwar |
| SIGNATURE | TALWAR V |
| AFFILIATIONS | McGill University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9806-0279 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 44 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Guided or self-guided resources: What works best for university student stress management
Exploring Self Over Time: Associations Between Adolescents’ Self-Portrait Features and Social-Emotional Self-Reports
Adolescents’ perceptions of safety in cyberbullying: The role of bystander support and relationship dynamics
The present study examines the perceptions of 90 adolescents aged 13-17 (Mage = 14.42, SD = 1.33, 55 female) on positive and negative forms of bystander support. Participants were shown nine videos depicting a cyberbullying occurrence and a form of positive (polite stop, empathy, positive thinking) or negative (bite back, call out, blame) bystander support from an acquaintance, friend, or a celebrity related to the victim. After each video, adole…
Bidirectional Associations Between Civic Engagement, Depressive Symptoms, and Suicidality in Youth: A Population‐Based Study
INTRODUCTION: Civic engagement is common in youth, yet its longitudinal association with mental health remains understudied. This study aims to document bidirectional associations between civic engagement, depressive symptoms, and suicidality at 20 and 23. METHODS: We included 1451 participants born in 1997/98 from the Québec Longitudinal Study of Child Development in Canada. At 20 and 23, youth self-reported their engagement in five types of civ…
Investigating the dynamic interplay of vertical and horizontal spirituality on gratitude in emerging adolescents
The approach to adolescence (8–12 years of age) is a transitional and sensitive time in all areas of development including neurobiological, emotional, social, moral and spiritual. However, little is known about the complex interactions between the social and cognitive factors related to adolescents’ beliefs and attitudes towards spirituality and gratitude. This study examined emerging adolescents’ perceptions of spirit, mind, emotion, and behavio…
Revised Socialization of Lying Questionnaire: A reflection of parent moral identity
The current study provides a validated, revised Socialization of Lying Questionnaire (Revised-SoL) and assesses how parent socialization of lying relates to parents' moral identity more broadly. Four factors were empirically validated: (1) the direct socialization of honesty; (2) indirect socialization via parents' modeling of lying behavior; (3) parents' discipline of lying and reinforcement of honesty; and (4) parents' perceptions of their chil…
Loneliness and self‐concept in the relations between Theory of Mind and social anhedonia in adolescents
This study explored the connections among adolescents' Theory of Mind (ToM), social anhedonia, loneliness, and self-concept. Research with clinical populations shows interrelations between mainly poor ToM skills, higher loneliness, a weaker self-concept, and high levels of social anhedonia. This study extends this work by investigating their relation in a nonclinical adolescent population of 236 Canadian adolescents from ages 11-18. Results revea…
Dilemma: Utilizing the activation decision-construction-action theory to understand and predict children's hypothetical decisions to conceal cases of school bullying
Kindness Is the Language That the Deaf Can Hear and the Blind Can See: Kindness, Theory of Mind and Well-Being in Adolescents
The results highlight implications for future research on adolescents' perceptions of prosociality, and kindness-based mental health interventions that promote social cognition and prosocial acts
When Is It Helpful to Get Involved? Adolescents’ Perceptions of Constructive and Aggressive Bystander Support from Friends, Acquaintances, and Public Figures in Cyberbullying
The present study examines adolescents' perceptions of both constructive and aggressive forms of bystander support and how these perceptions differ according to whether an acquaintance of the target, a friend of the target or a public figure is providing it. Ninety-nine adolescents between 13 and 17 years old ( M age = 14.42; SD = 1.35) participated in this study. Adolescents viewed a total of nine videos, each depicting a public cyberbullying si…
Parent‐reported problematic lying tendencies and BIS/BAS activity as predictors of children's antisocial lie‐telling
The current study examined whether age and parental reports of children's problematic lying, behavioural inhibition system (BIS) activity, and reward responsiveness predicted children's antisocial lie‐telling. Children from mostly middle and upper‐class Canadian families (ages 3–12, M = 6.23, SD = 2.52) participated in a modified Temptation Resistance Paradigm (TRP), where they were given opportunities to tell a self‐protective lie (to conceal a …
Encouraging honesty: Developmental differences in the influence of honesty promotion techniques
Given the value placed on honesty and the negative consequences of lying, encouraging children's truth-telling is important. The present investigation assessed honesty promotion techniques for encouraging 3-8-year-old Canadian children's (Study 1: n = 301, 54% female; Study 2: n = 229, 50% female from predominantly White middle-class samples) disclosure of a transgression and whether they varied by age. Study 1 examined promising to tell the trut…
The role of teacher support in increasing youths’ intentions to disclose cyberbullying experiences to teachers
Considering morally relevant theory of mind through a Social Domain Theory perspective
In order to extend research on children’s Theory of Mind (ToM) within moral development, researchers have proposed a novel area of research, Morally Relevant ToM. It has been argued to better account for the moral and social considerations that children are required to make when using their ToM abilities in real life situations. To further the research in this area, the Social Domain Theory can be used to provide a theoretical framework and new i…
The role of rapport in eliciting children’s truthful reports
Children (N = 114, ages 7–13) witnessed a transgressor steal money from a wallet and then asked them to lie about the theft when interviewed by a novel interviewer. During the interview, children were asked to either describe various experienced events (Narrative Practice Rapport-building condition) or participate in an interactive activity designed to focus on the relational aspects of rapport-building including mutual attentiveness, positivity,…
Longitudinal Exploration of Mindreading and Self-Conscious Emotions in Early Adolescents
Cyber-Bystander Behavior Among Canadian and Iranian Youth: The Influence of Bystander Type and Relationship to the Perpetrator on Moral Responsibility
The current study examines how social determinants influence the way youth from Canadian and Iranian contexts evaluate and morally disengage as bystanders of cyberbullying. While Iranian culture differs from other individualistic and collectivist cultures, Iranian youth have become just as technologically acculturated as their global peers. Despite this, less is understood about how Iranian youth respond to cyberbullying in comparison to youth fr…
Students’ moral emotions and judgments of cyberbullying: The influence of previous cyberbullying experiences
Children’s moral evaluations of different types of lies and parenting practices and across cultural contexts
“The thing is, it follows you everywhere”: Child and adolescent conceptions of cyberbullying
The effectiveness of cognitive instructions when children provide true and false eyewitness reports of another’s transgression
Children’s non-disclosures of another’s wrongdoing, particularly in cases involving alleged maltreatment, is a notable concern among forensic professionals. The current study was designed to provide these professionals with much needed information about the efficacy of a range of interviewing strategies, namely free-recall, cognitive instructions and closed-ended questions, when children are asked to conceal the transgression of an adult. After b…
Self-compassion, social cognition, and self-affect in adolescence: A longitudinal study
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Socialization of lying scale: Development and validation of a parent measure of socialization of truth and lie-telling behavior
This study focused on the development of the Socialization of Lying scale for which exploratory factor analysis demonstrated four empirically interpretable subscales: Parents’ Values and Direct Socialization about Honesty, Encouragement and Modeling of Lying, Consequences for Lying, and The Child’s Problematic Lying. These emergent factors suggest that parents teach and give messages about honesty in explicit and implicit ways that may map onto t…
Teacher ratings and adolescent students' perceived social behaviours and gender-role orientations
This cross-sectional study explores relationships among teachers’ ratings of students’ social behaviours and perceived competencies and gender-role orientations. Social behaviours, self-competencies, and gender-role orientations of 295 Canadian students (118 boys, 177 girls) were assessed by teachers’ ratings and students’ self-report questionnaires. Results showed significant and consistent associations between teachers’ perceptions of students’…
Moral evaluations of modest statements in light of maternal disciplinary method and cultures
The roles of culture and age in Canadian and Persian children’s moral evaluations of lie- and truth-telling in modest situations, as well as the impacts of parenting disciplinary methods, were assessed in this study. Data were collected from 360 children total: 180 children from both Canada and Iran. Participants’ were 5, 7, 9, and 11 years of age (M = 7.99 years, SD = 2.25 years), 55.2% males and 44.8% females. Parents completed a demographic fo…
Lying in the elementary school years: Verbal deception and its relation to second-order belief understanding
The development of lying to conceal one's own transgression was examined in school-age children. Children (N=172) between 6 and 11 years of age were asked not to peek at the answer to a trivia question while left alone in a room. Half of the children could not resist temptation and peeked at the answer. When the experimenter asked them whether they had peeked, the majority of children lied. However, children's subsequent verbal statements, made i…
The role of executive functioning and theory of mind in children’s lies for another and for themselves
Empathetic Concern in Emerging Adolescents: The Role of Theory of Mind and Gender Roles
The current study examined the roles of gender, and gender-role orientation in young adolescents' empathetic concern. In addition, this study aimed to explore the contribution of Theory of Mind in participants' empathetic concern. Finally, this study examined whether gender and gender-role orientation were implicated in emerging adolescents' Theory of Mind understanding. One-hundred-fifty 11- to 12-year-olds (79 self-identified females) completed…
Children's Spiritual Lives: The Development of a Children's Spirituality Measure
Previous researchers who have studied children's spirituality have often used narrow measures that do not account for the rich spiritual experiences of children within a multi-faith context. In the current study, we describe the initial stages of development of a children's spirituality measure, in which items were derived from children's spiritual narratives. An exploratory factor analysis of the items revealed three main factors, including Comf…
Definitional ceremonies: Narrative practices for psychologists to inform interdisciplinary teams' understanding of children's spirituality in pediatric settings
In pediatric settings, parents and children often seek spiritual and religious support from their healthcare provider, as they try to find meaning in their illness. Narrative practices, such as definitional ceremonies, can provide a unique framework for psychologists to explore children's spirituality and its role in the midst of illness. In addition, definitional ceremonies can be used as a means for psychologists to inform interdisciplinary tea…
Effects of a Punitive Environment on Children's Executive Functioning: A Natural Experiment
Few studies have examined the influence of environmental factors on children's executive functioning (EF) performance. The present study examined the effects of a punitive vs. non‐punitive school environment on West African children's EF skills. Tasks included a ‘cool’ (relatively non‐affective) and ‘hot’ (relatively affective/motivational) version of three EF tasks: delay of gratification; gift delay; and dimensional change card sort. Children h…
The Competency of Children to Testify: Psychological Research Informing Canadian Law Reform
The competency inquiry has traditionally been a critical initial challenge for child witnesses, most of who are called to testify about their own victimization or as witnesses of family violence. In most common law countries children can only testify if they can correctly answer questions about such abstract concepts as the “oath,” the “promise” and “truth.” These inquiries can be confusing to children, and may prevent children who are capable of…
Teacher ratings and adolescent students' perceived social behaviours and gender-role orientations
This cross-sectional study explores relationships among teachers’ ratings of students’ social behaviours and perceived competencies and gender-role orientations. Social behaviours, self-competencies, and gender-role orientations of 295 Canadian students (118 boys, 177 girls) were assessed by teachers’ ratings and students’ self-report questionnaires. Results showed significant and consistent associations between teachers’ perceptions of students’…
From Kantian to Machiavellian deceivers: Development of children's reasoning and self-reported use of secrets and lies
This article examines developmental differences in children's reasoning about secrecy and lying as well as their use of these behaviors in two studies. Study 1 explored children's ( N = 66, 8-15 years) reasoning about the circumstances in which secrecy and lying are acceptable. Study 2 analyzed children's ( N = 50, 8-15 years) actual reported daily frequency of secrets and lies in relation to maladaptive behavior problems. Overall, findings sugge…
Teachers’ Attitudes and Experiences Regarding Death Education in the Classroom
Encouraging honesty: Developmental differences in the influence of honesty promotion techniques
Given the value placed on honesty and the negative consequences of lying, encouraging children's truth-telling is important. The present investigation assessed honesty promotion techniques for encouraging 3-8-year-old Canadian children's (Study 1: n = 301, 54% female; Study 2: n = 229, 50% female from predominantly White middle-class samples) disclosure of a transgression and whether they varied by age. Study 1 examined promising to tell the trut…
Do They Really Mean It? Children’s Inference of Speaker Intentions and the Role of Age and Gender
Interpreting other people’s intentions during communication represents a remarkable challenge for children. Although many studies have examined children’s understanding of, for example, sarcasm, less is known about their interpretation. Using realistic audiovisual scenes, we invited 124 children between 8 and 12 years old to watch video clips of young adults using different speaker intentions. After watching each video clip, children answered que…
Adolescents’ Evaluation of Cyberbullying Events
Educators and other professionals working with adolescents have grown increasingly concerned about how technology affects social relationships given the amount of time that is spent engaging in online activities. Cyberbullying has sparked the interest of many researchers due to the tragic events reported in the media, relating to the online victimization that adolescents have experienced. Cyberbullying has been defined as any intentional and aggr…
Lying in the elementary school years: Verbal deception and its relation to second-order belief understanding
The development of lying to conceal one's own transgression was examined in school-age children. Children (N=172) between 6 and 11 years of age were asked not to peek at the answer to a trivia question while left alone in a room. Half of the children could not resist temptation and peeked at the answer. When the experimenter asked them whether they had peeked, the majority of children lied. However, children's subsequent verbal statements, made i…
Social and Cognitive Correlates of Children’s Lying Behavior
The relation between children’s lie-telling and their social and cognitive development was examined. Children (3–8 years) were told not to peek at a toy. Most children peeked and later lied about peeking. Children’s subsequent verbal statements were not always consistent with their initial denial and leaked critical information revealing their deceit. Children’s conceptual moral understanding of lies, executive functioning, and theory-of-mind und…
Pants on Fire? Detecting Children's Lies
While there has been much research on adults' abilities to detect deception, there have been very few studies examining both children's and adults' abilities to detect children's real, spontaneous lies. The present study asked both children and adults to make judgments of children's true and false reports. Participants (N = 156) were shown videotaped sessions of children who were either spontaneously lying or telling the truth. Results indicate t…
The Competency of Children to Testify: Psychological Research Informing Canadian Law Reform
The competency inquiry has traditionally been a critical initial challenge for child witnesses, most of who are called to testify about their own victimization or as witnesses of family violence. In most common law countries children can only testify if they can correctly answer questions about such abstract concepts as the “oath,” the “promise” and “truth.” These inquiries can be confusing to children, and may prevent children who are capable of…
From little white lies to filthy liars
Preadolescents’ gendered spiritual identities and self-regulation
Research suggests that self-control or self-regulation may play a role in the connections among spirituality, health, well-being, and social behavior. Within the framework of social-cognitive developmental theory, we explore the question of how do children and adolescents learn to think of themselves as gendered and spiritual beings within the context of social and self-relationships, and learn to have control over their mental and social worlds?…
Effects of a Punitive Environment on Children's Executive Functioning: A Natural Experiment
Few studies have examined the influence of environmental factors on children's executive functioning (EF) performance. The present study examined the effects of a punitive vs. non‐punitive school environment on West African children's EF skills. Tasks included a ‘cool’ (relatively non‐affective) and ‘hot’ (relatively affective/motivational) version of three EF tasks: delay of gratification; gift delay; and dimensional change card sort. Children h…
Diverse Voices: Children’s Perceptions of Spirituality
Children (N = 64; 6-11 years, 50% boy) from different religious and cultural backgrounds were interviewed using open-ended questions concerning their spiritual thoughts, beliefs, and experiences. Additionally, parents completed a demographic questionnaire and reported children's religious affiliation. Regardless of children's religious background, eighteen overarching themes emerged in the transcripts and include: 1) Feeling Good/Happy/Better whe…
Canadian children’s perceptions of spirituality: Diverse voices
Few researchers have explored children’s understandings of spirituality. Thus, Canadian children from different religious, spiritual and cultural backgrounds were asked open-ended questions concerning their spiritual thoughts, beliefs and experiences. Parents of participants completed a demographic questionnaire and reported children’s religious affiliation. Regardless of children’s religious background, six prominent themes emerged: (1) Positive…
Children’s lies and their detection: Implications for child witness testimony
Adolescents’ Evaluation of Cyberbullying Events
Educators and other professionals working with adolescents have grown increasingly concerned about how technology affects social relationships given the amount of time that is spent engaging in online activities. Cyberbullying has sparked the interest of many researchers due to the tragic events reported in the media, relating to the online victimization that adolescents have experienced. Cyberbullying has been defined as any intentional and aggr…
Teachers’ Attitudes and Experiences Regarding Death Education in the Classroom
Moving From Traditional Bullying to Cyberbullying: The Role of Moral Emotions and Reasoning
Definitional ceremonies: Narrative practices for psychologists to inform interdisciplinary teams' understanding of children's spirituality in pediatric settings
In pediatric settings, parents and children often seek spiritual and religious support from their healthcare provider, as they try to find meaning in their illness. Narrative practices, such as definitional ceremonies, can provide a unique framework for psychologists to explore children's spirituality and its role in the midst of illness. In addition, definitional ceremonies can be used as a means for psychologists to inform interdisciplinary tea…
Do As I Say and Not As I Think: Parent Socialisation of Lie‐Telling Behaviour
This study explored parent ( N = 146) perspectives about situations in which they think it is acceptable to lie, how this corresponds to how they socialise their children about lie‐telling and their children's actual behaviour. Results indicated the methods parents report using to teach their children about the acceptability of lie‐telling are consistent with what they report teaching their children about lie‐telling overall. Also, the frequency …
Children's Spiritual Lives: The Development of a Children's Spirituality Measure
Previous researchers who have studied children's spirituality have often used narrow measures that do not account for the rich spiritual experiences of children within a multi-faith context. In the current study, we describe the initial stages of development of a children's spirituality measure, in which items were derived from children's spiritual narratives. An exploratory factor analysis of the items revealed three main factors, including Comf…
The role of executive functioning and theory of mind in children’s lies for another and for themselves
From Kantian to Machiavellian deceivers: Development of children's reasoning and self-reported use of secrets and lies
This article examines developmental differences in children's reasoning about secrecy and lying as well as their use of these behaviors in two studies. Study 1 explored children's ( N = 66, 8-15 years) reasoning about the circumstances in which secrecy and lying are acceptable. Study 2 analyzed children's ( N = 50, 8-15 years) actual reported daily frequency of secrets and lies in relation to maladaptive behavior problems. Overall, findings sugge…
Emotional competencies in emerging adolescence: Relations between teacher ratings and student self-reports
This cross-sectional study examines gender-informed teachers’ and early adolescents’ reports of emotional competencies within the school setting. The sample for the current study consisted of 290 emerging adolescents (114 boys, 170 girls) recruited from 24 schools. Social-emotional competencies were assessed by students’ self-report questionnaires and teacher and parent reports. Results showed significant positive associations between teacher-rat…
The influence of an older sibling on preschoolers’ lie‐telling behavior
In the present study, children’s (2‐ to 5‐years old) lie‐telling was examined in relation to theory of mind (first‐order false belief understanding), executive functioning (measuring inhibitory control in conjunction with working memory), and presence of siblings in the home (no siblings vs. siblings; younger siblings vs. older siblings). Lie‐telling was observed using a temptation resistance paradigm. Overall, of the 152 (74.9%) children who pee…
When you think you know: The effectiveness of restrictive mediation on parental awareness of cyberbullying experiences among children and adolescents
The current study examined parental awareness of their child’s cyberbullying experiences in relation to the implementation of restrictive mediation strategies (e.g., interaction and technical restrictions) among children in elementary school and adolescents in high school. Canadian parent-child dyads (N = 102) completed a survey where parents reported their perceptions of their child or adolescent’s involvement in cyber aggression, cyber victimiz…
Do They Really Mean It? Children’s Inference of Speaker Intentions and the Role of Age and Gender
Interpreting other people’s intentions during communication represents a remarkable challenge for children. Although many studies have examined children’s understanding of, for example, sarcasm, less is known about their interpretation. Using realistic audiovisual scenes, we invited 124 children between 8 and 12 years old to watch video clips of young adults using different speaker intentions. After watching each video clip, children answered que…
Children's spirituality: Exploring spirituality in the lives of cancer survivors and a healthy comparison group
This study found that children with a history of cancer had higher scores on certain measures of spirituality compared to their healthy peers. Health history was found to significantly moderate the relations among spirituality and outcome variables, such as depression and anxiety. Furthermore, parent-child dyadscancer had more highly correlated scores than parent-child dyadshealthy on both the Depression subscale and the Existential Well-Being su…
Moral evaluations of modest statements in light of maternal disciplinary method and cultures
The roles of culture and age in Canadian and Persian children’s moral evaluations of lie- and truth-telling in modest situations, as well as the impacts of parenting disciplinary methods, were assessed in this study. Data were collected from 360 children total: 180 children from both Canada and Iran. Participants’ were 5, 7, 9, and 11 years of age (M = 7.99 years, SD = 2.25 years), 55.2% males and 44.8% females. Parents completed a demographic fo…
Utilizing the Activation-Decision-Construction-Action Theory to predict children's hypothetical decisions to deceive
The Decision component of the Activation-Decision-Construction-Action-Theory (ADCAT) utilizes a cost-benefit formula to explain the cognitive, motivational and social processes involved in deception. Three prior studies suggest that ADCAT can be used to predict adults' future deceptive behavior; however, no study has assessed the potential relevance of ADCAT with children. The present study is the first to date to examine whether this cost-benefi…
Psychology (49 works) · Developmental psychology (40 works) · Social Psychology (40 works) · Social Psychology (21 works) · Deception detection and forensic psychology (16 works) · Cognition (15 works) · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression (11 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (11 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (11 works) · Theory of mind (11 works)