The response time-based Concealed Information Test (RT-CIT) is an established memory detection paradigm. Slower RTs to critical information (called ‘probes’) compared to control items (called ...‘irrelevants’) reveal recognition. Different lines of research indicate that response conflict is a strong contributor to this RT difference. Previous studies used electromyography (EMG) to measure response conflict, but this requires special equipment and trained examiners. The aim of this study was to explore if response conflict can also be measured with an analog gaming keyboard that is sensitive to minimal finger movements. In a preregistered study, participants completed an autobiographical RT-CIT (
n
= 35) as well as a cued recognition task (modified Sternberg task;
n
= 33) for validation purposes. Partial errors, partial button presses of the incorrect response key, were more frequent in trials with response conflict than in trials without conflict. Partial errors were rare (CIT: 2.9%; Sternberg: 1.7% of conflict trials), suggesting analogue keyboards have lower sensitivity than EMG. This is the first evidence that analog keyboards can measure partial errors. Although likely less sensitive than EMG measures, potential benefits of analog keyboards include their accessibility, their compatibility with all tasks that use a standard keyboard, that no physical contact with the participant is needed, and ease of data collection (e.g., allowing for group testing).
Deception detection is a prevalent problem for security practitioners. With a need for more large-scale approaches, automated methods using machine learning have gained traction. However, detection ...performance still implies considerable error rates. Findings from different domains suggest that hybrid human-machine integrations could offer a viable path in detection tasks.
We collected a corpus of truthful and deceptive answers about participants' autobiographical intentions (n = 1640) and tested whether a combination of supervised machine learning and human judgment could improve deception detection accuracy. Human judges were presented with the outcome of the automated credibility judgment of truthful or deceptive statements. They could either fully overrule it (hybrid-overrule condition) or adjust it within a given boundary (hybrid-adjust condition).
The data suggest that in neither of the hybrid conditions did the human judgment add a meaningful contribution. Machine learning in isolation identified truth-tellers and liars with an overall accuracy of 69%. Human involvement through hybrid-overrule decisions brought the accuracy back to chance level. The hybrid-adjust condition did not improve deception detection performance. The decision-making strategies of humans suggest that the truth bias - the tendency to assume the other is telling the truth - could explain the detrimental effect.
The current study does not support the notion that humans can meaningfully add the deception detection performance of a machine learning system. All data are available at https://osf.io/45z7e/.
•Machine learning identified lies and truths about the future above the chance level.•Human judges were allowed to overrule or adjust the machine judgment.•When interacting with the machine judgment, humans impaired the system's performance.•Humans' truth bias might explain these findings.
There is accumulating evidence that reaction times (RTs) can be used to detect recognition of critical (e.g., crime) information. A limitation of this research base is its reliance upon small samples ...(average n = 24), and indications of publication bias. To advance RT-based memory detection, we report upon the development of the first web-based memory detection test. Participants in this research (Study1: n = 255; Study2: n = 262) tried to hide 2 high salient (birthday, country of origin) and 2 low salient (favourite colour, favourite animal) autobiographical details. RTs allowed to detect concealed autobiographical information, and this, as predicted, more successfully so than error rates, and for high salient than for low salient items. While much remains to be learned, memory detection 2.0 seems to offer an interesting new platform to efficiently and validly conduct RT-based memory detection research.
Although affective facial pictures are widely used in emotion research, standardised affective stimuli sets are rather scarce, and the existing sets have several limitations. We therefore conducted a ...validation study of 490 pictures of human facial expressions from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database (KDEF). Pictures were evaluated on emotional content and were rated on an intensity and arousal scale. Results indicate that the database contains a valid set of affective facial pictures. Hit rates, intensity, and arousal of the 20 best KDEF pictures for each basic emotion are provided in an appendix.
Is self-serving lying intuitive? Or does honesty come naturally? Many experiments have manipulated reliance on intuition in behavioral-dishonesty tasks, with mixed results. We present two ...meta-analyses (with evidential value) testing whether an intuitive mind-set affects the proportion of liars (k = 73; n = 12,711) and the magnitude of lying (k = 50; n = 6,473). The results indicate that when dishonesty harms abstract others, promoting intuition causes more people to lie, log odds ratio = 0.38, p = .0004, and people to lie more, Hedges’s g = 0.26, p < .0001. However, when dishonesty inflicts harm on concrete others, promoting intuition has no significant effect on dishonesty (p > .63). We propose one potential explanation: The intuitive appeal of prosociality may cancel out the intuitive selfish appeal of dishonesty, suggesting that the social consequences of lying could be a promising key to the riddle of intuition’s role in honesty. We discuss limitations such as the relatively unbalanced distribution of studies using concrete versus abstract victims and the overall large interstudy heterogeneity.
Verbal credibility assessments examine language differences to tell truthful from deceptive statements (e.g., of allegations of child sexual abuse). The dominant approach in psycholegal deception ...research to date (used in 81% of recent studies that report on accuracy) to estimate the accuracy of a method is to find the optimal statistical separation between lies and truths in a single dataset. However, this method lacks safeguards against accuracy overestimation.
A simulation study and empirical data show that this procedure produces overoptimistic accuracy rates that, especially for small sample size studies typical of this field, yield misleading conclusions up to the point that a non-diagnostic tool can be shown to be a valid one. Cross-validation is an easy remedy to this problem.
We caution psycholegal researchers to be more accurate about accuracy and propose guidelines for calculating and reporting accuracy rates.
Prominent cognitive theories postulate that an attentional bias toward threatening information contributes to the etiology, maintenance, or exacerbation of fear and anxiety. In this review, we ...investigate to what extent these causal claims are supported by sound empirical evidence. Although differences in attentional bias are associated with differences in fear and anxiety, this association does not emerge consistently. Moreover, there is only limited evidence that individual differences in attentional bias are related to individual differences in fear or anxiety. In line with a causal relation, some studies show that attentional bias precedes fear or anxiety in time. However, other studies show that fear and anxiety can precede the onset of attentional bias, suggesting circular or reciprocal causality. Importantly, a recent line of experimental research shows that changes in attentional bias can lead to changes in anxiety. Yet changes in fear and anxiety also lead to changes in attentional bias, which confirms that the relation between attentional bias and fear and anxiety is unlikely to be unidirectional. Finally, a similar causal relation between interpretation bias and anxiety has been documented. In sum, there is evidence in favor of causality, yet a strict unidirectional cause-effect model is unlikely to hold. The relation between attentional bias and fear and anxiety is best described as a bidirectional, maintaining, or mutually reinforcing relation.
The Internet has already changed people's lives considerably and is likely to drastically change forensic research. We developed a web‐based test to reveal concealed autobiographical information. ...Initial studies identified a number of conditions that affect diagnostic efficiency. By combining these moderators, this study investigated the full potential of the online ID‐check. Participants (n = 101) tried to hide their identity and claimed a false identity in a reaction time‐based Concealed Information Test. Half of the participants were presented with personal details (e.g., first name, last name, birthday), whereas the others only saw irrelevant details. Results showed that participants′ true identity could be detected with high accuracy (AUC = 0.98; overall accuracy: 86–94%). Online memory detection can reliably and validly detect whether someone is hiding their true identity. This suggests that online memory detection might become a valuable tool for forensic applications.
Johnson argued that coercive control is crucial in explaining heterogeneity in intimate partner violence, with such violence being more frequent, less reciprocal, and more often male-to-female ...aggression when it serves to exercise control over the partner. We assessed 280 Dutch forensic outpatients who had recently engaged in intimate partner violence on nonaggressive coercive control. Control showed significant, small to moderate, associations with more frequent past year acts of psychological aggression, physical assault, and sexual coercion and more frequently resulted in partner injury. Control was unrelated to reciprocity of partner violence. High controlling violence was enacted mostly, but not exclusively by men. Overall, while perhaps not having a uniquely strong association, our findings provide partial support for the role of coercive control in intimate partner violence and suggest it may benefit intimate partner violence risk assessment.
Traditional techniques for detecting deception, such as the 'lie-detector test' (or polygraph), are based upon the idea that lying is associated with stress. However, it is possible that people ...telling the truth will experience stress, whereas not all liars will. Because of this, the validity of such methods is questionable. As an alternative, a knowledge-based approach known as the 'Concealed Information Test' has been developed which investigates whether the examinee recognizes secret information - for example a crime suspect recognizing critical crime details that only the culprit could know. The Concealed Information Test has been supported by decades of research, and is used widely in Japan. This is the first book to focus on this exciting approach and will be of interest to law enforcement agencies and academics and professionals in psychology, criminology, policing and law.
PDF
