Due to differences in social communication and cognitive functioning, autistic adults may have greater difficulty engaging in and detecting deception compared to neurotypical adults. Consequently, ...autistic adults may experience strained social relationships or face increased risk of victimization. It is therefore crucial that research investigates the psychological mechanisms that are responsible for autistic adults’ difficulties in the deception process in order to inform interventions required to reduce risk. However, weaknesses of extant research exploring deception in autism include a heavy focus on children and limited theoretical exploration of underlying psychological mechanisms. To address these weaknesses, this review aims to introduce a system-level theoretical framework to the study of deception in autistic adulthood: The Brunswik Lens Model of Deception. Here, we provide a comprehensive account of how autism may influence all processes involved in deception, including: Choosing to Lie (1), Producing Deception Cues (2), Perceiving Deception Cues (3) , and Making the Veracity Decision (4). This review also offers evidence-based, theoretical predictions and testable hypotheses concerning how autistic and neurotypical adults’ behavior may differ at each stage in the deception process. The call to organize future research in relation to a joint theoretical perspective will encourage the field to make substantive, theoretically motivated progress toward the development of a comprehensive model of deception in autistic adulthood. Moreover, the utilization of the Brunswik Lens Model of Deception in future autism research may assist in the development of interventions to help protect autistic adults against manipulation and victimization.
Asking unexpected questions, asking the interviewee to sketch the room, and asking the interviewee to make a timeline are techniques that have been shown to help an interviewer detect deceit. ...However, evidence of the efficacy of these techniques comes from studies of North American and North-West European participants, who are on average more individualistic (i.e., value individual achievements and uniqueness over group achievements) than people from other parts of the world. In two experiments involving participants with individualistic and collectivistic cultural backgrounds, we provide a more culturally diverse test of these techniques. Specifically, this study describes two experiments that investigated these interviewing techniques with people who are recent migrants to the UK. Experiment 1 used the LIWC categories “I,” “we,” “cognitive processes,” and “social processes” as the dependent variables; Experiment 2 measured details provided in a sketch and a timeline. The results show no effects of veracity in either of these experiments, although various effects of cultural differences in the outcome variables were observed. This suggests that cues to deception may not necessarily generalize to people from different cultural backgrounds. These results highlight the importance of conducting lie detection research across different countries and cultures.
Compared to other Western countries, malingering research is still relatively scarce in the United Kingdom, partly because only a few brief and easy-to-use symptom validity tests (SVTs) have been ...validated for use with British test-takers. This online study examined the validity of the Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29) in detecting feigned schizophrenia and random responding in 151 British volunteers. Each participant took three IOP-29 test administrations: (a) responding honestly; (b) pretending to suffer from schizophrenia; and (c) responding at random. Additionally, they also responded to a schizotypy measure (OLIFE) under standard instruction. The IOP-29's feigning scale (FDS) showed excellent validity in discriminating honest responding from feigned schizophrenia (AUC 1/4.99), and its classification accuracy was not significantly affected by the presence of schizotypal traits. Additionally, a recently introduced IOP-29 scale aimed at detecting random responding (RRS) demonstrated very promising results.
Construal level theory states that future events that are nearer in the future and events that are more likely to happen have lower construal levels, and therefore have less detail, than events that ...are further away and/or less likely to happen. Consistent with this theory, the number of details in a statement can be a moderately good cue to deception. If veracity and temporal distance both affect detail, detail may only be a good cue to deception about events that occur at certain temporal distances. This paper describes a study on whether temporal distance and veracity affect detail levels in statements about intentions. The results suggest that temporal distance and veracity do not affect detail levels in this dataset. Intentions that were completed also did not differ from uncompleted intentions. Overall, the study found no support for the hypothesised effects of temporal distance and veracity on level of detail.
The British public generally adhered to COVID‐19‐related restrictions, but as the pandemic drew on, it became challenging for some populations. Parents with young children were identified as a ...vulnerable group. We collected rich, mixed‐methods survey data from 99 UK‐based parents (91 mothers) of children under 12, who described their lockdown transgressions. Household mixing was the most prevalent broken rule. Template analysis found that rule breaking was driven by ‘ingroup‐level’ prosocial motivations to protect the mental and social health of family and loved ones, and that parents were ‘engaged’ decision‐makers who underwent careful deliberation when deciding to break rules, making trade‐offs, bending rules, mitigating risks, reaching consensus, and reacting to perceived rule injustices. Cumulative link models found that the perceived reasonableness of rule violations was predicted by social norms. Rules were broken by parents not for antisocial reasons, but for ‘ingroup‐level’ prosocial reasons, linked to supporting loved ones.
In this paper, we describe three experiments that explored whether individual differences in episodic future thought (EFT) ability affects credibility when participants told the truth and lied about ...their occupation. Credibility was measured by the number of perceptual details, statement length, level of detail and plausibility in verbal accounts and sketches (Experiment 1) and by other participants' veracity judgments of the verbal accounts (Experiment 2) and sketches (Experiment 3). In Experiment 1, participants with higher EFT ability generated more detailed verbal accounts and more plausible sketches than those with lower EFT ability. In Experiments 2 and 3, EFT ability did not predict veracity judgements of the verbal accounts or sketches derived from Experiment 1. The findings across all experiments suggest that EFT ability affects the ability to generate credible accounts however, EFT ability does not affect credibility judgements.
Summary
This study examined the effect of a child passing or failing the UK truth and lies discussion (TLD) compared with the Canadian promise to tell the truth on mock jurors' decisions regarding ...witness credibility and truthfulness and defendant guilt. Ninety‐two participants read a vignette that described a child witnessing his father physically attacking his mother. The vignette was manipulated for witness age (age 4 years and age 8 years) and TLD performance/promise. Supporting the hypotheses, participants rated the witness's credibility and truthfulness significantly higher after a witness passed a TLD and after promising to tell the truth. The age of the child witness did not significantly affect jurors' decision making. The results are discussed in relation to arguments regarding the abolition of the UK's TLD in favour of introducing a promise to tell the truth.
Background
Episodic Future Thought (EFT) ability affects how credible individuals appear (O'Connell et al., The effect of individual differences in episodic future thought on the ability to lie about ...intentions manuscript submitted for publication, Psychology Department, Lancaster University, 2022). However, it is unclear how individuals with higher EFT ability create this credible demeanour. This paper describes two studies that explored participants' subjective cue use when judging the veracity of verbal statements (Study 1) and written statements (Study 2) provided by individuals with varying EFT ability.
Method
In Study 1, 68 participants judged the veracity and indicated which cues influenced their veracity judgements of six truthful and six deceptive verbal statements. In Study 2, 102 participants judged the veracity and indicated which cues influenced their veracity judgements of 24 truthful or 24 deceptive written statements.
Results
Study 1 and Study 2 showed that the EFT ability of the sender affected subjective cue use. In Study 1, participants were influenced by different subjective cues when judging truthful (vs. deceptive) verbal statements. In Study 2, participants reported being influenced by the same cues in both veracity conditions. Study 1 showed that three cues mediated the relationship between EFT ability and veracity judgements. In Study 2, four cues mediated the EFT ability–veracity judgement relationship in the deceptive condition. There were no mediation effects in the truthful condition.
Conclusion
We propose that EFT ability is an underlying cognitive mechanism involved in creating a credible demeanour which can affect participants' veracity judgements. The current results suggest that the cues present in higher EFT individual's accounts may be contributing to this credibility effect.
This study investigated the interaction between internal characteristics and external prompts (drawing and dramatisation) in children's eyewitness recall. Eighty-one 3- to 6- year old children ...witnessed a live event involving an altercation between two actors in their schools. They were asked to tell what happened (Verbal condition), draw what happened while talking about it (Drawing condition), or show and tell by using gestures and mime (Dramatisation condition), one day, two weeks, and approximately six months after the event. Independent measures of temperament, mood, symbolic skills, and language ability were taken. Children in the Drawing condition reported significantly more details about objects than children in the Verbal condition after a two-week delay. Symbolic skills and shyness affected children's recall. Our findings suggest that considering young children's cognitive skills and temperamental traits may help facilitate their eyewitness recall.
This study investigated whether the content of children’s drawings of an event changes over three successive interviews about that event. It also assessed whether children recall more details ...verbally than they draw. Twenty-seven 3- to 6-year old children witnessed a live event which ended with one actor stealing a cuddly toy. They were interviewed about it 1 day, 2 weeks, and 6 months later. At each interview, children were asked to make a drawing of the event while narrating what happened. We analyzed the content of the drawings for seven features relevant to the event as well as inaccurate information. Children’s inclusion of “the perpetrator” and “the victim” decreased over time but the other features remained stable. Children verbally reported significantly more details than they drew. Our findings suggest that children provide less information in drawings than in verbal reports, but this information may be more reliable and stable compared to verbal reports over multiple interviews.
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