“Did you ever lie as a child?” Asked by Kang Lee. With 20 years of study experience with how children learn to tell lies, Kang Lee came to TED and shared some of the discoveries his team has made. Mr. Lee pointed out that people hold three common believes: Children won’t lie before the first grade. Lie from children are simple, primary and poor-constructed. Additionally, young liar can be signal of misbehavior or defect in character which result in long-term negative impact on life. However, Mr. Lee clams that these 3 common believes are wrong. In fact, children start lying in their early age. Their lies are hard to detect. And lying requires mind-reading and self-control ability. Mr. Lee’s speech focuses mainly on logos, decorated with pathos and furnished with ethos. And these three modes strongly supported his thesis, making his speech creditable and effective.
Firstly, most of the paragraph of Mr. Lee’s speech emphasize on logos, trying his best to give the audience a clear fact of his research data and result. His logic is irrefutable and effective. Around a quarter of the whole speech is occupied with video clips Mr. Lee played and they are direct fact. Video clips are simple and easy to understand within short time period and contain large amount of information required for reading the research content. With few words followed with closely related videos, our audience could quickly engage in the topic. During the introduction part of research, Mr. Lee introduced a guessing game experiment in a 30s video with the following rules: Children are asked to guess the number on the cards. 2. Winner of the game will be rewarded. However, the tester will leave the room with excuse and tell children not to peak the unrevealed card.
And children’s honesty will be tested combined with observation from hidden camera. Timesaving, intuitionistic and highly effective. When half way through the TED talk, in order to prove that the audience present are poor lie-detector, Mr. Lee played 2 short videos of one lying child and one honest child. These videos received not only applause but also deep thought from the audience. All two evidences of Mr. Lee’s thesis are backed up with solid data and diagram which generated from research. These statistic evidence gives Mr. Lee’s speech great credibility and efficiently summarize the previous content and border the conclusion. During the argument of first point, three parallel bar charts are used to illustrate that sex, country and religion are irrelevant variable and children’s lie-telling rate is proportional to their age, end up with 80% at the age of. The gender factor is not mention in the introduction.
During the argument of secondary evidence, another bar chart with various group of people identifying children’s life is shown to audience. It summarizes the criteria of evaluation with a 50% line clearly shown on chart and gives supplementary information of other groups of people. Secondly, although being a researcher and sophisticated scientist, Mr. Lee still filled his speech with humor and indicated his primary identity as a father. The speech shows mostly his research has profound meaning and influence in social welfare despite callous data. He also combined pathos in his speech which gives his speech more effectiveness.
While going through the second evidence “We’re poor children lie-detector”, Mr. Lee showed a picture of his young son, Nathan with an expressionless face. Even his father cannot tell lie from his own son in such situation. Most of the audience in TED are around middle-aged, probably with sons and daughters. The description of researcher’s own child may trigger their memory to some extent and causes an emotional resonance in depth. During the summarization part of Mr. Lee’s speech, he introduced more profound using of transdermal optical imaging technology. These usages are including education, dating or even shopping in people’s daily life. He focused on one sample, that was, the technology could be used on detecting the elder’s expression and even reveal underlying disease. As mentioned, the audience are mostly middle-aged. And they may easily relate this technology to their lives or their family member.
With such emotion-evoking evidences, the audience shares same feeling with the speaker. Thirdly, Mr. Lee shows his Ethos with introduction of his accomplishment and clear understanding of his research project. As Mr. Lee mentioned at the start of speech, he has 20 years of study experience with how children learn to tell lies. All of the speech is based on Lee and his team’s work and could find reference from his research paper. Although the most paragraph is told with plain words with agreeable tone, Lee put emphasis on professional terms followed with clear explanation. In addition, Mr. Lee’s speech is well organized, followed with linear structure and strengthens every evidence with a paragraph of refutation.
Although the transdermal detection technology is not mentioned until the conclusion of the speech, all the speech is foreshadowing this technology. Starting with the introduction of question “Did you ever lie as a child?”, Mr. Lee then brought out his thesis with two evidence in order. First evidence “Lying indicate development” closely followed with theory that lying requires mind-reading and self-control. These 2 abilities are essential for social activity. And lacking such abilities are associated with serious developmental problems. Secondly, children’s lies are hard to detect. This evidence also followed with both on-site feedback and research from Lee’s work as refutation. With the combination of three modes of persuasion, Kang Lee gives us a clear view of transdermal optical imaging technology. The whole speech focuses more on logos and covers both ethos and pathos. And all of them serves the thesis properly. The speech is capable of arousing great interest from researchers and science amateur. In conclusion, Kang’s speech is effective.
