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For the study, children aged six and seven years old were given the opportunity to peek at the answers on the back of a card during a trivia game.

Unbeknownst to them, they were being recorded on a hidden camera. Those children who looked at the answers but then denied it did better at a later memory test.

The link between lying and verbal memory is thought to stem from the fact that covering lies involves keeping track of lots of verbal information.

As a result, children who possessed better memories and could keep track of lots of information were able to successfully make and maintain a cover story for their lie.

Dr Tracy Alloway, project lead from the University of North Florida, said: "This research shows that thought processes, specifically verbal working memory, are important to complex social interactions like lying because the children needed to juggle multiple pieces of information while keeping the researcher’s perspective in mind.”

The results were published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.