Nor does strict parenting or a religious upbringing have any impact.

Dr Lee said that catching your children lying was not a bad hing but should be exploited as a " "teachable moment".

“You shouldn’t smack or scream at your child but you should talk about the importance of honesty and the negativity of lying," he told the Sunday Times.

"After the age of eight the opportunities are going to be very rare.”

The research team invited younger children — one at a time — to sit in a room with hidden cameras. A soft toy was placed behind them.

When the researcher briefly left the room, the children were told not to look. In nine out of 10 cases cameras caught them peeking.

But when asked if they had looked, they almost always said no. They tripped themselves up when asked what they thought the toy might be.

One little girl asked to place her hand underneath a blanket that was over the toy before she answered the question. After feeling the toy but not seeing it, she said: “It feels purple so it must be Barney.”

Dr Lee, who caught his son Nathan, three, looking at the toy, said: “We even had cameras trained on their knees because we thought their legs would fidget if they were telling a lie, but it isn’t true.”

Older children were set a test paper but were told they must not look at the answers printed on the back.

Some of the questions were easy, such as who lives in the White House. But the children who looked at the back gave the printed answer “Presidius Akeman” to the bogus question “Who discovered Tunisia?”

When asked how they knew this, some said they learnt it in a history class.

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