Detecting Concealed Information and Deception

Recent Developments

J. Peter Rosenfeld

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780128127308
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Detecting Concealed Information and Deception: Recent Developments assembles contributions from the world's leading experts on all aspects of concealed information detection. This reference examines an array of different methods—behavioral, verbal interview and physiological—of detecting concealed information. Chapters from leading legal authorities address how to make use of detected information for present and future legal purposes. With a theoretical and empirical foundation, the book also covers new human interviewing techniques, including the highly influential Implicit Association Test among others.

• Presents research from Concealed Information Test (CIT) studies
• Explores the legal implications and admissibility of the CIT
• Covers EEG, event-related brain potentials (ERP) and autonomic detection measures
• Reviews multiple verbal lie detection tools
• Discusses ocular movements during deception and evasion
• Identifies how to perceive malicious intentions
• Explores personality dimensions associated with deception, including religion, age and gender

Section 1

Background, History, and Theory

Outline

Chapter 1. Physiological Measures in the Detection of Deception and Concealed Information

Chapter 2. Concealed Information Test: Theoretical Background

Chapter 3. The External Validity of Studies Examining the Detection of Concealed Knowledge Using the Concealed Information Test

Chapter 4. Physiological Responses in the Concealed Information Test: A Selective Review in the Light of Recognition and Concealment

Chapter 5. Field Findings From the Concealed Information Test in Japan

Chapter 1

Physiological Measures in the Detection of Deception and Concealed Information

Wolfgang Ambach¹, and Matthias Gamer^{2 1}Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (IGPP), Freiburg, Germany ²University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Abstract

Attempts to detect deception by means of physiological measurement have evolved over more than 100 years. Combining elaborated interrogation procedures with capturing the bodily responses of the electrodermal, cardiovascular, and pulmonary systems brought forth specific procedures and measurement techniques. Nevertheless, a specific physiological pattern accompanying lying was not found in these measures. Yet, the Concealed Information Test (CIT), which classically uses a multichannel recording of physiological measures mostly related to the autonomic nervous system, proved to differentiate between concealed (e.g., crime-related) knowledge and actually absent knowledge (of an innocent person) with remarkable accuracy. From the very beginning of its application, research questions referred to the diagnostic value and the incremental information of each measure, the specific mental processes reflected in the various measures, and, particularly later with technical development, the exploration of new measures. From the applied perspective, the susceptibility of the CIT to countermeasures, leakage of crime-related information to innocents, the importance of the context in which the CIT is applied, or the influence of memory distortions, were prominent questions. Besides providing a brief overview of detection-of-deception paradigms, this chapter focuses on the CIT with “classic” polygraphic measurement, for which it summarizes the development of research lines until the present.

Keywords

Concealed information test; Control question test; Deception detection; Electrodermal activity; Heart rate; Polygraph; Psychophysiology; Respiration

Attempts to detect deception by means of physiological measurement have evolved over more than 100 years. Combining elaborated interrogation procedures with capturing bodily responses brought forth specific procedures and measurement techniques that are routinely used in forensic investigations all over the world. This chapter provides a brief overview of detection-of-deception paradigms and then focuses on the Concealed Information Test (CIT), which allows for detecting concealed (crime-related) knowledge. In contrast to electroencephalography (EEG) and neuroimaging techniques, this chapter emphases on “classic” polygraphic measurement, consisting of the typical multichannel recording of electrodermal, respiratory, and cardiovascular measures, which are mostly related to the autonomic nervous system. The diagnostic value and incremental information of each measure in case of their combination are discussed as well as the contribution of specific mental processes to the response pattern. From an applied perspective, we will discuss potential threats to the validity of the CIT, including its susceptibility to countermeasures, the leakage of crime-related information to innocents, and potential memory distortions due to high levels of stress and anxiety.

History

Deceptive behavior is one core feature of human interaction. The attempts to uncover it have been performed in personal, institutional, and forensic contexts with different approaches. Among the manifold methods that were used to detect deception, psychophysiological measurement has become most prominent over the last century. This technique, in general, makes use of the fact that bodily functions are linked to and correlated with mental processes. Therefore, observable or measurable bodily functions can allow for drawing inferences about particular mental processes.

Human feeling and thinking is always bound to a physical substrate, and human nature includes a close relationship between what we call mind and what we call body. In fact, human feelings and thoughts are always accompanied by bodily changes, which we call the physiological correlates of the psychological events and processes that they are related to. Naturally, such correlates always occur within the brain, which is directly involved as the physical substrate of emotion and cognition. Moreover, due to the multifold cross-linkage of anatomically and/or physiologically discernible systems within the human body, somatic systems other than the brain also easily get involved in psychophysiological processes, and to a variable degree.

Deception is no exception: Whatever mental processes are involved, they will always be bound to functional brain changes, and they will, most likely, be accompanied by temporal changes in other physiological systems. Physiological correlates of deceptive action can be open to observation; if hidden to the eye, they can eventually be detectable through an appropriate physiological measurement. Hence, it seems highly plausible to search for valid indicators of deception in physiological measures. Not surprisingly, this search began centuries ago, and detection attempts were made by means of observation and, with the development of measurement technology, by increasingly sophisticated methods of physiological measurement. These attempts primarily aimed at identifying bodily correlates of the mental processes associated with deception. The search was driven by the intention to detect deception in various, particularly forensic, contexts. Consequently, the choice and development of methods was guided by practical usefulness rather than theoretical considerations.

The colorful history of deception detection has been summarized by Lykken (1998) in his popular book “A Tremor in The Blood. Uses and Abuses of The Lie Detector.” Despite all ups and downs that deception detection underwent throughout history, the issue has always maintained highest interest in the public as well as in forensic professionals. New methods said to detect deceit regularly commanded the greatest attention, and the application of a new method was often widened to forensic and commercial use long before its reliability, validity, and theoretical substantiation was fairly understood.

Early attempts to detect lies by means of physiological measurement trace back to the end of the 19th century (for a review, see Lykken, 1998). In 1895, Cesare Lombroso measured volume changes of the hand using a modified hydrosphygmograph during a forensic interrogation. Changes in heart rate and blood pressure, derived from this volume measurement, were used to distinguish truthful from deceptive answers of a culprit. Although cardiovascular measurement was further improved in the following years, respiratory measures also received attention in the context of truth detection. In 1914, Vittorio Benussi first used respiration measurement to tell truth from lies; from the breathing recordings, he calculated inspiration and expiration time and used them as deception indicators. The measurement techniques of heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, which were the first physiological measures used to detect deception, were then further refined and combined into a single apparatus, which then also allowed for simultaneously plotting the temporal course of these measures on paper. John Larson was the first to apply such a multichannel writer, or polygraph, in 1921. The next important step in the history of lie detection was the inclusion of skin-resistance measurement by Leonarde Keeler who used the augmented combination of measures in several criminal cases in the 1930s. The combination of cardiac, vascular, respiratory, and electrodermal measurements that was established in these years has remained the core of polygraphic measurement up to the present.

For detecting deception, physiological measurement has always been combined with the interrogation of a suspect. However, no standardized interrogation protocol is known from the early decades of psychophysiological lie detection. Hence, beside the development of physiological measurement over decades, standardizing and optimizing the interrogation was then pursued as an aim of equivalent importance. John Reid introduced a combination of critical and control questions, performed with physiological measurement, in 1947, which later became well known as the Control or Comparison Question Test (CQT). In the first variant, the interrogation protocol combined a series of “crime-related” (“relevant,” e.g., “Did you steal the money from the wallet?”) and “control” (“irrelevant,” e.g., “Does 2 plus 2 equal 4?”) questions with multichannel physiological measurement. Although crime-related questions were supposed to induce an emotional reaction in a guilty rather than an innocent person, control questions were supposed to induce no emotional reaction, regardless of the examinee's guilt status. To infer this guilt status, the examinee's physiological response amplitudes were then compared between crime-related and control questions. In the later CQT, crime-related questions were not compared to irrelevant questions in the former sense, but to “comparison” questions that were supposed to elicit physiological reactions from innocent examinees (e.g., “During the first 16 years of your life, did you e...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Section 1. Background, History, and Theory
• Section 2. Neuroscience Applications
• Section 3. Ocular Applications
• Section 4. Behavioral Applications
• Section 5. Verbal and Interviewing Applications
• Section 6. Special Issues
• Index