The qEEG in the Lie Detection Problem: The Localization of Guilt?

Deception detection studies have become a trending topic over the past 34 years. Lie detection seems to have moral, ethical, methodological, clinical, and legal implications. Although researchers have studied the P300 (P3) Event-Related Potential (ERP) component towards an understanding of the phenomenon extensively, deception remains a well-hidden cognitive process. The basic set-up of most of the deception detection studies contains a mock-crime scenario and the use of a Concealed Information Test (CIT). The same design requires a deceptive response from the participants. Towards this direction, the present study employed a fundamental research question via examining if meaningful stimuli can modulate the P300 component compared to target & irrelevant stimuli in guilty participants. The aim of the present study was: a) to check if a non-deceptive design could produce similar results to previous ERP-based deception detection studies, and b) to raise interest concerning the set-up of the experimental design of previous applications. In line with the literature, and with no deceptive behavior, P3 results revealed similar patterns and statistical significance. The unexpected findings of Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) and P100 (P1) provide a new index to be further explored in future deception detection studies. While the present results should not be taken as a new index for deception, they appoint a new path against the phenomenon. Future research suggestions are also addressed.

The Effect of the Type of Lie and Response Elicited on Lying-Induced Guilt Guilt is focused on specific incidents and behaviours, and entails a sense of personal agency and control.

The capacity to deceive others is a complex mental skill that requires the ability to suppress truthful information. The polygraph is widely used in countries such as the USA to detect deception. However, little is known about the effects of emotional processes (such as the fear of being found guilty despite being innocent) on the physiological responses that are used to detect lies. The aim of this study was to investigate the time course and neural correlates of untruthful behavior by analyzing electrocortical indexes in response to visually presented neutral and affective questions. Affective questions included sexual, shameful or disgusting topics. A total of 296 questions that were inherently true or false were presented to 25 subjects while ERPs were recorded from 128 scalp sites. Subjects were asked to lie on half of the questions and to answer truthfully on the remaining half. Behavioral and ERP responses indicated an increased need for executive control functions, namely working memory, inhibition and task switching processes, during deceptive responses. Deceptive responses also elicited a more negative N400 over the prefrontal areas and a smaller late positivity (LP 550-750 ms) over the prefrontal and frontal areas. However, a reduction in LP amplitude was also elicited by truthful affective responses. The failure to observe a difference in LP responses across conditions likely results from emotional interference. A swLORETA inverse solution was computed on the N400 amplitude (300-400 ms) for the dishonest -honest contrast. These results showed the activation of the superior, medial, middle and inferior frontal gyri (BA9, 11, 47) and the anterior cingulate cortex during deceptive responses. Our results conclude that the N400 amplitude is a reliable neural marker of deception.

Journal of Applied Psychology, 2003

Meta analysis of GKT studies 2 Abstract The authors performed meta analysis based on 169 conditions, gathered from 80 laboratory studies, to estimate the validity of the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT) with the electrodermal measure. The overall average effect size was 1.55, but there were considerable variations among studies. In particular, mock-crime studies produced the highest average effect size (2.09). Three additional moderators were identified: Motivational instructions, deceptive ("no") verbal responses, and the use of at least 5 questions were associated with enhanced validity. Finally, a set of 10 studies that best approximated applications of the GKT under optimal conditions produced an average effect size of 3.12. The authors discuss factors that might limit the generalizability of these results and recommend further research of the GKT in realistic setups.

International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2009

The effects of the state of guilt and the context in which critical information was received on the accuracy of the Concealed Information Test (CIT) were examined in a between-subjects mock crime experiment. 100 participants were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions and one control condition. The experimental conditions were created using a 2 × 2 factorial design (two conditions of the context in which the crime-related details were collected – crime context or neutral context, crossed with two guilt conditions – accomplices or innocents). Results indicated that accomplices were more effectively detected than innocent participants, although both were given the same critical information. Information gathered in the crime context yielded stronger orientation to the critical items than similar information gathered in a neutral context.

Cognition & Emotion, 2004

The Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT; Lykken, 1959) assesses whether suspects conceal information about a crime ( “guilty knowledge”). Previous studies have demonstrated larger physiological reactions to guilty knowledge compared to unknown information. In three experiments, we investigated whether guilty knowledge also demands attention. During an alleged polygraph examination, participants were presented with to‐be‐detected pictures ( “guilty knowledge”), nonsignificant, familiar pictures ( “mere knowledge”), and previously unseen pictures ( “neutral information”) for 250 ms in a modified dot probe task. In all three experiments, probe responses were slower on guilty knowledge trials as compared to the neutral trials. Results are discussed in terms of an information‐processing view on orienting to guilty knowledge.

Reviews in the Neurosciences, 2017

Several studies have aimed to address the natural inability of humankind to detect deception and accurately discriminate lying from truth in the legal context. To date, it has been well established that telling a lie is a complex mental activity. During deception, many functions of higher cognition are involved: the decision to lie, withholding the truth, fabricating the lie, monitoring whether the receiver believes the lie, and, if necessary, adjusting the fabricated story and maintaining a consistent lie. In the previous 15 years, increasing interest in the neuroscience of deception has resulted in new possibilities to investigate and interfere with the ability to lie directly from the brain. Cognitive psychology, as well as neuroimaging and neurostimulation studies, are increasing the possibility that neuroscience will be useful for lie detection. This paper discusses the scientific validity of the literature on neuroimaging and neurostimulation regarding lie detection to underst...

Psychology Crime & Law, 2008

To be able to assess the veracity of statements offered by suspects, witnesses and alleged victims is of paramount importance in legal settings. The aim of this paper is to provide an initial piece of scientific support for the idea that psychologically informed mind-reading can improve people's ability to detect deception. To this end, a theoretical framework is sketched; a framework resting upon psychological notions from three domains: (a) the psychology of mind-reading, (b) the psychology of self-regulation, and (c) the psychology of guilt and innocence. Importantly, the term mind-reading is used in an instrumental (vs descriptive) manner, where the goal is to improve the ability to predict a person's behaviour (not to read the content of a person's mind). It is argued that the mind-reading process can be facilitated by theoretical and empirical work pertaining to ‘the psychology of guilt’ and ‘the psychology of innocence’. Using psychologically informed mind-reading, predictions of guilty and innocent suspects’ behaviour are specified, and gauged against existing empirical work. Finally, a recently published training study is used to illustrate how the outcome of instrumental mind-reading can be translated into interview tactics, and ultimately improve interviewers’ ability to detect deception.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 1996