Kang Lee

OISE's Kang Lee wins SSHRC Impact Award for research on childhood dishonesty

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 16:52:47 +0000

OISE's Kang Lee wins SSHRC Impact Award for research on childhood dishonesty

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 11/23/2023 - 11:52

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Kang Lee, a professor at OISE, is a world-renowned expert on childhood dishonesty (supplied image)

Perry King

Kang Lee

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Research & Innovation

SSHRC

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Lee was honoured for his research on child moral development – specifically, how children learn to tell lies

Kang Lee, a professor in the department of applied psychology and human development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, has received the 2023 Insight Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

The award, which comes with a $50,000 prize, recognizes outstanding achievement arising from SSHRC-funded initiatives. Lee, a world-renowned expert on childhood dishonesty, was honoured for his research – spanning three decades – on child moral development: specifically, how children learn to tell lies.

Lee’s work is credited with transforming our understanding of the development of lying, whilst having far-reaching implications and impacts on real-world practices. For example, his work led to Canadian law reforms in 2005 concerning obtaining evidence from children. Since 2006, a legal procedure based on his research must be employed to admit children as witnesses in Canadian criminal courts.

“I am deeply grateful for SSHRC’s strong commitment to supporting social science research like that of mine,” said Lee, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair. “Because of this commitment, our lab was able to make practical contributions far beyond those we could have ever foreseen.

“These include impacts on legal reforms concerning child witnesses in Canada, advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of children with conduct problems, and the invention of a new imaging technology to monitor and study people’s physical and mental health using smartphones.”

The imaging technology developed by Lee – transdermal optimal imaging – measures physiological changes to the human body, like heart rate and blood pressure, simply by looking at a person’s face. The technology led to cutting-edge applications like Anura, which uses smartphone selfie videos to assess physical and mental health wellness, and is powered by the DeepAffex cloud engine.

“Professor Lee’s research has made a broad impact across critical areas in education, and his exceptional scholarship, teaching, and mentoring of educational researchers are remarkable contributions to the field, to OISE, and to U of T,” said Professor Erica Walker, dean of OISE.

“He is highly deserving of this Insight Award, a prestigious honour for an outstanding professor. On behalf of the OISE community, I wholeheartedly congratulate Professor Lee for this significant recognition from SSHRC.”

Lee thanked the more than 10,000 children who participated in his studies on the development of deception, and have since grown into successful adults – professors, lawyers and thriving students. “Rest assured, their childhood tales have not led them astray,” he says.

Seniors who fall prey to scams have poorer cognitive skills, are less honest than those who don't: U of T research

lanthierj — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 17:28:14 +0000

Seniors who fall prey to scams have poorer cognitive skills, are less honest than those who don't: U of T research

lanthierj Mon, 04/17/2017 - 13:28

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Professor Kang Lee is one of the lead authors of the paper

Lindsey Craig

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Lindsey Craig

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Poorer cognitive skills are the main reason some seniors fall prey to scams, new research from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto shows.

But it’s not just limitations in their ability to think, learn and reason that leave some seniors vulnerable. Older victims of fraud also tend to be less conscientious and less honest than non-victims of the same age group, the researchers found.

“The results of this study were very surprising – they dispel a common belief about why some older people fall victim to fraud,” said one of the study’s lead authors, Dr. Kang Lee, professor at OISE’s Jackman Institute of Child Study and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair.

“People often think things like loneliness or trusting behaviours are the culprit,” said co-lead author and OISE doctoral researcher Rebecca Judges. “But this study shows that cognitive factors – not social factors – are the biggest difference between older adult victims and non-victims.”

‘The Role of Cognition, Personality, and Trust in Fraud Victimization in Older Adults’ was conducted with researchers from Ryerson University and published in the journal, Frontiers in Psychology last week. It involved participants in Ontario aged 60 and older who had not been diagnosed with any cognitive impairment and lived independently in their communities.

Participants were asked about 15 common types of consumer and mass marketing fraud including weight loss scams, advance free loans, lottery fraud, and emergency (or grandparent) scams.

The skills required to think, learn and reason

Everyday cognitive skills include such things as being able to perform simple calculations in one’s head, follow a conversation from start to finish, and remember events that took place over the past month.

“The same abilities that enable someone to do these tasks well may also be important for identifying and avoiding scams,” Dr. Lee said.

Conscientiousness, honesty, also a factor

Results also showed that older victims are less honest, less conscientious and have less humility than non-victims of the same age group.

Highly conscientious people carefully consider consequences of their actions, are very thorough in thorough in their work, and tend to work hard to achieve their goals, the researchers said. People with very low levels of conscientiousness, however, tend to act on impulse and neglect small details in their work and daily activities.

“These tendencies could cause them to impulsively agree to a scammer's requests, and ignore the minor details that could indicate a scammer's malicious intent,” said Judges.

People who are extremely honest are more likely to be genuine and avoid corruption, Lee said, while people with very low levels of honesty tend to be motivated to break rules and manipulate others for personal gain.

“It’s possible that less honest individuals view a scam as a way to experience personal financial gain in an unconventional way, and may not be as adverse to the underhanded nature of some scams,” he said.

Support needed to prevent decline of cognitive skills

Ryerson University researcher and U of T alumna Dr. Lixia Yang, who collaborated on the study along with PhD student Sara Gallant, said the results can play an important role in the prevention of fraud victimization in older people.

Judges agreed.

“For example, identifying the most important skills needed in financial decision-making and then working to prevent cognitive decline in those key areas could make an impact,” she said, also suggesting additional support be provided to those experiencing cognitive decline.

Canadians aged 60-69 most frequently targeted

Despite efforts to prevent fraud victimization, people in Western nations are collectively losing billions of dollars according to consumer groups like the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, and others.

In 2014, Canadians lost a reported $74 million to mass-marketing scams alone, and 60-69 year olds were the most frequently targeted group, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. In the same year, Americans lost $1.7 billion to various scams, according to the Federal Trade Commission, while the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission reported losses of $82 million due to fraud.

Read about Kang Lee's research into babies and racial bias

Read about Kang Lee's NuraLogix

Racial bias may begin in babies at six months, U of T research reveals

ullahnor — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 17:01:37 +0000

Racial bias may begin in babies at six months, U of T research reveals

ullahnor Tue, 04/11/2017 - 13:01

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Professor Kang Lee says lack of exposure to other races may be the cause of racial bias in babies (photo from Shutterstock)

Lindsey Craig

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Lindsey Craig

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U of T Professor Kang Lee says two of his recent studies indicate that racial bias may arise in babies as young as six to nine months of age.

Lee, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, says that lack of exposure to other races may be the cause.

He and researchers from the University of Toronto, the U.S., U.K., France and China, show that six to nine month olds demonstrate racial bias in favour of members of their own race and racial bias against those of other races.

In the first study, published in Developmental Science, Lee showed that six- to nine-month-old babies begin to associate faces from their own race with happy music and those from other races with sad music.

In the second study, published in Child Development, the researchers found that babies as young as six months were more inclined to learn information from an adult of his or her own race, rather than from an adult of a different race.

“The results show that race-based bias already exists around the second half of a child’s first year,” said Lee, a Canada Research Chair in moral development and developmental neuroscience and lead author of the studies. “This challenges the popular view that race-based bias first emerges only during the preschool years.”

He believes the results of these studies are important given the issues of widespread racial bias and racism around the world.

“These findings thus point to the possibility that racial bias may arise out of our lack of exposure to other-race individuals in infancy,” Lee said. “If we can pinpoint the starting point of racial bias, which we may have done here, we can start to find ways to prevent racial biases from happening.”

Researchers say these findings are important because they offer a new perspective on the cause of race-based bias.

“When we consider why someone has a racial bias, we often think of negative experiences he or she may have had with other-race individuals. But these findings suggest that a race-based bias emerges without experience with other-race individuals,” said Naiqi (Gabriel) Xiao, who also led research for the two studies and now is a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University.

This can be inferred because prior studies from other labs have indicated that over 90 per cent of people many infants typically interact with are of their own race. Following this pattern, the current studies involved babies who had little to no prior experience with other-race individuals.

“An important finding is that infants will learn from people they are most exposed to,” said Xiao, indicating that parents can help prevent racial bias by introducing their children to people from a variety of races.

Lee said it’s important to be mindful of the impact racial bias has on our everyday lives, stressing that not only is explicit bias a concern but so too are implicit forms.

“Implicit racial biases tend to be subconscious, pernicious, and insidious,” he said. “It permeates almost all of our social interactions, from health care to commerce, employment, politics, and dating. Because of that, it’s very important to study where these kinds of biases come from and use that information to try and prevent racial biases from developing,” he said.

Is it the truth or a lie? Kang Lee’s new technology could help you decide

lavende4 — Mon, 16 May 2016 16:51:01 +0000

Is it the truth or a lie? Kang Lee’s new technology could help you decide lavende4 Mon, 05/16/2016 - 12:51

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Kang Lee explains the possible benefits of his hidden emotion-revealing technology. He also cautions there may be important implications which should be considered in the future (OISETube/YouTube)

Lindsey Craig

Author legacy

Lindsey Craig

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Imagine if a teacher could tell whether students in a classroom were having trouble with a lesson. Or what if there was an easy way to find out if your date really likes you?

Kang Lee, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education’s Jackman Institute of Child Study, has developed a new technology that can answer these questions.

It’s all featured in a TED Talk released May 13 which highlights Lee’s research on lying, specifically in children, and his new hidden emotion-revealing technology.

Lee has been studying the science of lying for more than 20 years.In his TED Talk, which took place in Vancouver in February of this year, he showcases a new summary of his research that continues to demonstrate that not only do children lie, they do so by the age of 2.

His studies also show that kids who lie at an early age tend to be more advanced cognitively.

Importantly, Lee’s TED Talk also sheds light – for the first time – on his new technology which reveals hidden human emotion.

In addition to education and dating, Lee also says the technology can be used to detect anxiety, whether or not a politician is lying, or if someone is responding positively or negatively to a product. The technology works with a video camera found in most cell phones, tablets and computer devices. It is non-invasive, inexpensive and can be used remotely.

[embed_content nid=7659 (class="additional class")/]

“In terms of lie detection, with this technology, because it can be used remotely, it can also be used covertly, so we could use it at the border or at the police station,” he said.

The technology could also offer benefits related to health care. For example, someone using Skype with an elderly parent could detect his or her heart rate, breathing, stress level and possibly his or her level of pain, or health risks.

Just as potential benefits of the technology quickly add up, Lee also recognizes that revealing hidden emotion could have major implications.

“It could change the way humans interact with each other. We need to have discussion about the ways in which this technology can and should be used in the future,” he said.

The product is not yet available to consumers, but Lee is working with Nuralogix, a Toronto-based startup company, to bring it to market.

Kang Lee

OISE's Kang Lee wins SSHRC Impact Award for research on childhood dishonesty

Seniors who fall prey to scams have poorer cognitive skills, are less honest than those who don't: U of T research

Racial bias may begin in babies at six months, U of T research reveals

Read more about Lee's research

Is it the truth or a lie? Kang Lee’s new technology could help you decide

Read more about Dr. Lee’s emotion-revealing technology, Transdermal Optical Imaging, and startup Nuralogix

Kang Lee featured in the Washington Post: Politicians lie? Actually, we’re all pretty good at it by age 5

Kang Lee’s TEDx Talk at University of Toronto: Little Liars: Insights from Children’s Lies | Kang Lee | TEDxUofT