A Comparison of Approaches to Detect Deception

Abstract

A promising method to detect deception is the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT) which assesses whether an individual possesses knowledge about a particular crime. Specifically, the GKT involves a series of questions with multiple answers where one answer is relevant to the crime and the others are not. In theory, if a "suspect" is guilty, s/he will recognize the crime-relevant item and display a physiological orienting response that is discernable from responses to irrelevant items. The most widely studied physiological endpoint in conjunction with the GKT is the galvanic skin response (GSR) which reflects activity of the eccrine sweat gland and represents sympathetic modulation of the autonomic nervous system. Little is known regarding the validity of alternate physiological endpoints or if combined endpoints enhance detection accuracy over GSR alone. In this study we compared different physiological approaches to detect deception with the GKT. Secondarily, we explored sociobehavioral moderators of deception, including values, ethnic identity and resilience. Forty-two military men (age 23.9 +/- 0.4 years) participated in a mock-crime and then completed a 10-question GKT. Endpoints included GSR, heart rate (HR; reflecting vagal modulation), and finger pulse line length (FPLL; a blood pressure waveform calculation reflecting combined sympathetic-parasympathetic modulation). Separate one-way repeated measures ANOVA with five levels compared mean physiological responses to each question. A common scoring procedure (Lykken, 1959) was applied to classify subjects as guilty or innocent for each physiological endpoint. ROC curves were then constructed to assess the diagnostic value of each endpoint and to determine whether combined measures detected guilt more effectively than GSR alone.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 30, 2010
Accession Number
ADA537848

Entities

People

  • Benedict J. Fern
  • Dain S. Horning
  • Heather Halbert
  • Hong Gao
  • Jasmine Y. Khosravi
  • Jeffrey B. Phillips
  • Jill E. Bennett
  • Joseph F. Chandler
  • Marcus K. Taylor

Organizations

  • Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Engineered Resilient Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Autonomic Nervous System
  • Cardiovascular Physiological Phenomena
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Deception
  • Detection
  • Galvanic Skin Response
  • Governments
  • Heart Rate
  • Information Science
  • Modulation
  • Nervous System
  • Psychological Phenomena And Processes
  • Psychology
  • Psychophysiology
  • Waveforms

Readers

  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML