Dr. Sarah Zanette

Dr. Zanette's research focuses on improving our understanding of childhood deception (i.e., lying and cheating) and applying this knowledge to legal, forensic, clinical, and parenting contexts. Specifically, she investigates questions regarding how children learn to deceive and in what contexts; the social, moral, and cognitive factors associated with lying and cheating in childhood; how children’s lies can be reliably detected; and other similar topics.

Representative Publications

*denotes student contributions
Jackson, R., Ekerim Akbulut, M.*, Zanette, S., Selcuk, B., & Lee, K. (2021). Parenting by lying in Turkey:
Experience in childhood and negative outcomes in adulthood. Humanities and Social Sciences
Communications, 8:202. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00877-9

Zanette, S., Walsh, M., Augimeri, L.,& Lee, K. (2020). Differences and similarities in lying frequency,
moral judgements, and beliefs about lying among children with and without conduct
problems. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 192:104768.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104768

Bruer, K. C., Zanette, S., Ding, X., Lyon, T.D., & Lee, K. (2020). Identifying liars through the automatic
decoding of children’s facial expressions. Child Development, 91(4), e995-e1011.
https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13336

Santos, R. M., Zanette, S., Kwok, S. M.*, Heyman, G. D., & Lee, K. (2017). Exposure to parenting by
lying in childhood: Associations with negative outcomes in adulthood. Frontiers in Psychology,
8:1240. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01240

Zanette, S., Gao, X., Brunet, M., & Lee, K. (2016). Automated decoding of facial expressions reveals
marked differences in children when telling antisocial versus prosocial lies. Journal of
Experimental Child Psychology, 150, 165-179. https://doi.org/10.1016/jecp.2016.05.007