Jennifer Lavoie, PhD, is currently visiting the Violence Research Center (VRC) at the Institute of Criminology. She joins the VRC team of researchers headed by Professor Manuel Eisner to collaborate on projects tackling children’s violence prevention.
Jennifer brings her expertise on children’s deception and concealment. She explains: “The importance of deception, secrecy and disclosure to violence against children lays in the fact that much violence toward children is hidden out of sight until it is disclosed, but yet many children tend to keep this information to themselves. Studying violence against children from the lens of concealment and deception permits broad-level analyses of how to interrupt the cycle of violence that children and their families experience.”
Jennifer has received support for her research from federal and provincial funding agencies in Canada, from the Society for Research in Child Development, as well as other public and private agencies. She has numerous publications in the area of children’s deception and concealment. Her most recent papers include:
- Lavoie, J., & Talwar, V. (2018). Care to share? Children’s cognitive skills and concealing responses to a parent, Topics in Cognitive Science, 1-19. doi:10.1111/tops.12390
- Lavoie, J., Wyman, J., Crossman, A. M., & Talwar, V. (2018). Lie-telling as a mode of antisocial action: Children’s lies and behavior problems, Journal of Moral Education, 47, 432-450. doi:10.1080/03057240.2017.1405343
- Lavoie, J., Leduc, K., Arruda, C., Crossman, A., & Talwar, V. (2017). Developmental profiles of children’s spontaneous lie-telling behavior, Cognitive Development, 41, 33-45. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2016.12.002.