Adult Detection of Children's Selfish and Polite Lies: Experience Matters

Five groups of participants (N = 150) with differing amounts of experience working with children were assessed on their ability to detect children's lying or truth telling. Children's lies were told for antisocial reasons (i.e., self‐serving lies) and for prosocial reasons (i.e., to benefit others). Overall, adults were more accurate at identifying children's dishonest statements than their true statements, and children's antisocial lies were detected more accurately than were their prosocial lies. While adults without experience were poor at detecting child lie tellers and truth tellers, adults with extensive child experience were better at distinguishing children's lies and truths.     

Using text analysis software to detect deception in written short‐answer questions in employee selection

This study investigated if word frequencies informed by the Newman‐Pennebaker (NP) and Reality Monitoring (RM) models could classify honest and deceptive responses to short‐answer questions often used in online employee applications. Participants (n = 106; 58% male; M_age = 30.28 years, SD = 8.85) completed two written short‐answer questions both deceptively and honestly. The questions asked participants to describe a notable personal achievement or a time where they had demonstrated interpersonal skills. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count was used to calculate the prevalence of words in various linguistic categories. Deceptive statements contained significantly fewer first‐person singular pronouns, auxiliary verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, and cognitive process words. Results revealed the NP and RM models accuracy at classifying responses varied on question type.     

‘Lyin' Ted’, ‘Crooked Hillary’, and ‘Deceptive Donald’: Language of Lies in the 2016 US Presidential Debates

Language in the high‐stakes 2016 US presidential primary campaign was contentious, filled with name‐calling, personal attacks, and insults. Language in debates served at least three political functions: for image making, to imagine potential realities currently not in practice, and to disavow facts. In past research, the reality monitoring (RM) framework has discriminated accurately between truthful and deceptive accounts (~70% classification). Truthful accounts show greater sensory, time and space, and affective information, with little evidence of cognitive operations. An RM algorithm was used with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software to code candidates' language. RM scores were significantly higher in fact‐checked truth statements than in lies, and debate language in the 2016 primaries was as deceptive as fact‐checked lies. In a binary logistic regression model, one RM criterion, cognitive processes, predicted veracity using computerized RM, classifying 87% of fact‐checked truth statements but only 28% of fact‐checked lie statements (63% classification overall).Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Accuracy and confidence in detecting truths andlies in elaborations and denials:Truth bias, lie bias and individual differences

Accuracy in the ability to detect truths and lies isimportant in a legal setting. It might be used as atool in police investigations to eliminate potentialsuspects, to check the truthfulness of informants orto examine contradictory statements of witnesses andsuspects in the same case. A consistent finding in thedetection of deception literature is the truthbias: People's accuracy at detecting truths isusually higher than their accuracy at detecting lies.The present article examines whether the existence ofa truth bias depends on the type of lie. It is arguedthat a truth bias may occur when people judgeextensive statements (e.g. elaborations), but that alie bias may occur when people judge statements whichdo not provide much verbal information (e.g. denials).Fifty participants (college students) were exposed to20 video fragments of 20 people telling elaborations(10) or denials (10). Half of the elaborations anddenials were truthful, the other half were deceptive.After each fragment, the participants were asked toindicate whether the person was lying or telling thetruth and how confident they were in their decisionmaking. As predicted, with regard to elaborations atruth bias was found and with regard to denials a liebias was found. In other words, people have difficultyin accurately judging deceptive elaborations andtruthful denials. The study further revealedindividual differences in participants' confidence atdetecting deceit. The more socially anxious/shy theparticipants reported themselves to be, the lessconfident they were in their ability to detect deceit.Also, the more extraverted they themselves reported tobe, the more confident they were in their ability todetect deceit. The importance of confidence onimproving people's ability to detect deceit will bediscussed.     

Detecting Deceit Via Analyses of Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior in Children and Adults

This experiment examined children's and undergraduates' verbal and nonverbal deceptive behavior, and the extent to which their truths and lies could be correctly classified by paying attention to these responses. Participants (N= 196) aged 5–6, 10–11, and 14–15, as well as university undergraduates, participated in an erasing the blackboard event, and told the truth or lied about the event afterwards. Nonverbal and verbal responses were coded, the latter with Criteria‐Based Content Analysis and Reality Monitoring. Although children and undergraduates demonstrated different behaviors (for example, the children obtained lower CBCA scores and made more movements), actual cues to deceit were remarkably similar across different age groups (for example, both 5–6‐year‐olds and undergraduates obtained lower CBCA scores and made fewer movements while lying). A combination of verbal and nonverbal lie detection methods resulted in more correct classifications of liars and truth tellers than the verbal and nonverbal lie detection methods individually, with the combined method obtaining hit rates as high as 88%.     

Young Deceivers: Executive Functioning and Antisocial Lie‐telling in Preschool Aged Children

The present study examined the emergence of antisocial lie‐telling in very young children. Lie‐telling was studied in relation to executive functioning skills and children's abilities to identify both truths and lies. A total of 65 children (M_{age in months} = 31.75, SD = 1.87) participated in a modified temptation resistance paradigm (TRP; designed to elicit spontaneous lies). Executive functioning was measured through an inhibitory control task and a forward search planning task. The Truth/Lie Identification task was administered (Lyon, Carrick, & Quas, 2010 ) to measure children's abilities to accurately distinguish truths and lies. During the TRP, a total of 89.23% children peeked at the toy when a research assistant left the room, and of those children, 29.31% lied to the research assistant. Significant differences on executive functioning measures were found between lie‐tellers and confessors, as well as for the Truth/Lie Identification task. Lie‐tellers had higher scores on measures of inhibitory control and forward search planning. Lie‐tellers also had higher accuracy on the Truth/Lie Identification task than confessors. This study provides a unique contribution to the literature by examining 2.5‐year‐old children's emerging lie‐telling abilities, a relatively understudied age during which fledgling lie‐telling emerges. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corrections for extreme proportions and their biasing effects on estimated values ofd′

Estimatingd′ from extreme false-alarm or hit proportions (p = 0 orp = 1) requires the use of a correction, because thez score of such proportions takes on infinite values. Two commonly used corrections are compared by using Monte-Carlo simulations. The first is the 1/(2N) rule for which an extreme proportion is corrected by this factor befored′ is calculated. The second is the log-linear rule for which each cell frequency in the contingency table is increased by 0.5 irrespective of the contents of each cell. Results showed that the log-linear rule resulted in less biased estimates ofd′ that always underestimated populationd′. The 1/(2N) rule, apart from being more biased, could either over- or underestimate populationd′.     

Children's prepared and unprepared lies: can adults see through their strategies?

We investigated adults' ability to detect children's prepared and unprepared lies and truths. Furthermore, we examined children's strategies when lying. Thirty children (11–13 years) were interviewed about one self‐experienced and one invented event each. Half had prepared their statements, the other half not. Sixty adult observers assessed the veracity of 10 videotaped statements each. Overall deception detection accuracy (51.5%) was not better than chance. The adults showed higher accuracy for unprepared statements (56.6%), than prepared statements (46.1%). The adults reported to have used more verbal than nonverbal cues to deception, especially the Detail criterion. The most frequent verbal strategy reported by the children was to use real‐life components (e.g. own or others' experiences); the most frequent nonverbal strategy was to stay calm. Arguably, the low accuracy is due to adults' failure to see through the lying children's strategies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Expertise in Deception Detection Involves Actively Prompting Diagnostic Information Rather Than Passive Behavioral Observation

In a proof‐of‐concept study, an expert obtained 100% deception‐detection accuracy over 33 interviews. Tapes of the interactions were shown to N = 136 students who obtained 79.1% accuracy (Mdn = 83.3%, mode = 100%). The findings were replicated in a second experiment with 5 different experts who collectively conducted 89 interviews. The new experts were 97.8% accurate in cheating detection and 95.5% accurate at detecting who cheated. A sample of N = 34 students watched a random sample of 36 expert interviews and obtained 93.6% accuracy. The data suggest that experts can accurately distinguish truths from lies when they are allowed to actively question a potential liar, and nonexperts can obtain high accuracy when viewing expertly questioned senders.     

The effects of distinctiveness,presentation time and delay on face recognition

Abstract

The distinctiveness of a face has been found to be an important factor in face recognition. We investigated the effect of the distinctiveness of a face upon subjects' speed and accuracy of recognition following different presentation times and retention intervals. It was found that (1) hits decreased with increasing delay; (2) false alarms increased and d primes decreased with a presentation time of 1 sec compared with 5 sec; (3) distinctive faces received more hits and higher d primes than non-distinctive faces; and (4) response latencies were shorter for distinctive targets than for distinctive distraction or non distinctive targets or distractors. These results were discussed in terms of the literature on the distinctiveness effect in face recognition.     

The Proof of Utility and Equity in Mill's Utilitarianism

Bolzano incorporated Kant's distinction between intuitions and concepts into the doctrine of propositions by distinguishing between conceptual (Begriffssätze an sich) and intuitive propositions (Anschauungssätze an sich). An intuitive proposition contains at least one objective intuition, that is, a simple idea that represents exactly one object; a conceptual proposition contains no objective intuition. After Bolzano, philosophers dispensed with the distinction between conceptual and intuitive propositions. So why did Bolzano attach philosophical importance to it? I will argue that, ultimately, the value of the distinction lies in the fact that conceptual and intuitive truths have different objective grounds: if a conceptual truth is grounded at all, its ground is a conceptual truth. The difference in grounds between conceptual and intuitive truths motivates Bolzano's criticism of Kant's view that intuition plays the fundamental role in mathematics, a conceptual science by Bolzano's lights.     

The verifiability approach to deception detection: A preregistered direct replication of the information protocol condition of Nahari,Vrij, and Fisher (2014b)

Nahari, Vrij, and Fischer [(2014b), Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28, 122–128] found that, when participants were forewarned that their statements would be checked for verifiable details, truth tellers gave much more verifiable details than liars. In this direct replication (n = 72), participants wrote a statement claiming they had carried out their regular campus activities, whereas liars had actually stolen an exam. Statements were coded for verifiable details. Our primary prediction was confirmed: Truth tellers provided significantly more verifiable details than liars. Of note, the replication effect size (d = 0.49) was less than half that of the original (d = 1.14), and – like in the original study – was smaller than the lie‐truth effect size for total details (verifiable and unverifiable details combined; d = 0.80). We hope this will stimulate other independent investigations of VA to tell whether or not coding for verifiability will pass Ockham's razor test.     

The relation between lisping and visual recognition memory in children

It was argued that if silent reading involves articulatory coding then children with a pronounced lisp ought to code two visual nonsense words such as RETH and RESS more similarly than children without a lisp. This, in tum, would lead to more false positives in a recognition memory task. Although the data confirmed this hypothesis, it turned out that lisping children made more correct positives (hits) as well. Lisping and normal children did not differ in sensitivity (d^′); therefore, the main result was a difference in criterion. An implausible hypothesis was offered so as to salvage a portion of the original argument.     

Dissociative effects of phonological vs. semantic associates on recognition memory in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm

Using a variation of the Deese/Roediger–McDermott paradigm in four experiments, we examined hit rate, false alarm rate, and memory discriminability (d′) for critical items (e.g., sleep) after their semantic associates (e.g., dream, rest, and awake), phonological associates (e.g., bleep, sheep, and cheap) or unrelated items were studied. Replicating previous research (e.g., Neely & Tse, 2007), d′ was lower for critical items than for yoked associates in semantic lists. However, d′ was higher for critical items than for yoked associates in phonological lists, even when the same critical items were used for these two list types. The memory discriminability of critical items was enhanced by phonological lists via a larger increase in their hit rates than in their false alarm rates, relative to the same critical items in lists of unrelated words. These findings (a) could not be fully accounted for by the activation-based theories proposed in the false memory literature, and (b) may suggest that the memory discriminabilities of semantic and phonological lists are modulated by two distinct activation mechanisms.     

Test of a brief theory of planned behaviour‐based intervention to promote adolescent safe sex intentions

The present study tested a brief (303 word) intervention designed to change attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control regarding a safe sex behaviour in a sample of 16‐ to 18‐year‐olds. Participants (N = 288) were randomized to receive either an experimental intervention or a control (knowledge only) intervention and completed measures of their reactions to the stimuli as well as pre‐ and post‐test measures of theory of planned behaviour variables. The experimental intervention significantly increased message processing (mean between‐group difference = 0.73, 95% CI = 0.40, 1.06; Cohen's d = .52), message acceptance (mean between‐group difference = 0.82, 95% CI = 0.57, 1.07; Cohen's d = .77), subjective norm (adjusted Mean between‐group difference = 0.54, 95% CI = 0.26, 0.81; Cohen's d = .37; mean within‐group difference for intervention condition = 0.59, 95% CI = 0.36, 0.81; Cohen's d = .38) and intention (adjusted Mean between‐group difference = 0.27, 95% CI = 0.02, 0.53; Cohen's d = .20; mean within‐group difference for intervention condition = 0.54, 95% CI = 0.33, 0.75; Cohen's d = .31), but not attitude or perceived behavioural control. The effects of the experimental intervention on intention were mediated solely through subjective norm. The present findings: (a) compare favourably in terms of the effect sizes reported in previous research in this area (mean Cohen's d for within‐group difference for intervention conditions = .009 and .09, for norms and intention, respectively, see Albarracín et al. (2003) ), (b) imply that subjective norms are causally related to intentions, and (c) suggest that interventions designed to change subjective norms (as opposed to communication of risks and fear appeals) might ultimately be effective in changing behaviour.     

The Effects of Truth–Lie Base Rate on Interactive Deception Detection Accuracy

Consistent with the Park and Levine's (PL) probability model of deception detection accuracy, previous research has shown that as the proportion of honest messages increases, there is a corresponding linear increase in correct truth–lie discrimination. Three experiments (N = 120, 205, and 243, respectively) varied the truth–lie base rate in an interactive deception detection task. Linear base‐rate effects were observed in all 3 experiments (average effect r#x02009;= .61) regardless of whether the judges were interactive participants or passive observers, previously acquainted or strangers, or previously exposed to truths or lies. The predictive power of the PL probability model appears robust and extends to interactive deception despite PL's logical incompatibility with interpersonal deception theory.     

Police officers' credibility judgments: Accuracy and estimated ability

A study was conducted to examine Spanish police officers' and nonofficers' lie‐ and truth‐detection accuracy, as well as their estimated detection ability. The participants were 121 police officers and 146 undergraduates who watched videotaped truthful and deceptive statements. They had to indicate: (1) whether each statement was truthful or deceptive, and (2) how good police officers were, in comparison with the general population, at detecting the truthfulness or deceptiveness of a statement. Results indicate that police officers' accuracy was not higher than that of nonofficers, rather, while the officers reached an accuracy rate close to chance probability, the undergraduates surpassed that probability. Officers had a very strong tendency to judge the statements as deceptive; this made them less accurate than the students in judging the truthful accounts, while both groups reached a similar accuracy when judging the deceptive ones. Both occupational samples considered that the police are more capable of identifying truths and lies than the general population. However, this belief was stronger among the officers themselves than among the nonofficers. No significant correlation between estimated ability and accuracy was found for either sample. The results are explained in terms of the participants' wrong beliefs about the cues to deceit and the socialization process that police officers undergo, which would increase their confidence and perceived ability while hindering their learning of the actual indicators of deceit. The need for officers to receive training is emphasized, and some directions are given on how this training should be carried out.     

The word-frequency paradox in recognition

High-frequency words are recalled better than are low-frequency words, but low-frequency words produce higher hit rates in a recognition test than do high-frequency words. Two experiments provided new date on the phenomenon and also evidence relevant to the dual process model of recognition, which postulates that recognition judgments are a function of increments in item familiarity and of item retrievability. First, recall and recognition by subjects who initially performed a single lexical decision task were compared with those of subjects who also gave definitions of high-, low-, and very low-frequency target words. In the second experiment, subjects initially performed either a semantic, elaborative task or an integrative task that focused attention on the physical, perceptual features of the same words. Both experiments showed that extensive elaborative processing results in higher recall and hit rates but lower false alarm rates, whereas word frequency has a monotonic, linear effect on recall and false alarm rates, but a paradoxical, curvilinear effect on hit rates. Elaboration is apparently more effective when the potential availability of meaningful connections with other structures is greater (as for high-frequency words). The results are consistent with the dual process model.     

Prior probabilities and representational momentum

In many previous experiments on representational momentum (in which memory for the final location of a moving target is displaced in the direction of target motion), participants judged whether a probe presented after a target vanished was at the same location where that target vanished or at a different location. The experiments reported here manipulated the actual or expected prior probability a same response to such a probe would be correct. In Experiment 1, a same response was correct on 10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, or 90% of the trials, but observers were not instructed regarding these probabilities. In Experiment 2, a same response was correct on 11% of the trials, but different groups of participants were instructed that a same response would be correct on 10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, or 90% of the trials. Probabilities of a same response to different probe positions, weighted mean estimates of representational momentum, hit rates and false alarm rates, and d′ and ß are reported. Representational momentum occurred in all conditions but was not influenced by actual or expected prior probability a same response would be correct. The data suggest representational momentum does not result from changes in sensitivity, and a distinction between performance bias and competence bias is introduced.     

Content in Context Improves Deception Detection Accuracy

Past research has shown that people are only slightly better than chance at distinguishing truths from lies. Higher accuracy rates, however, are possible when contextual knowledge is used to judge the veracity of situated message content. The utility of content in context was shown in a series of experiments with students (N = 26, 45, 51, 25, 127) and experts (N = 66). Across studies, average accuracy was 75% in the content in context groups compared with 57% in the controls. These results demonstrate the importance of situating judges within a meaningful context and have important implications for deception theory.