No abstract

The N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) is elicited by words that complete sentences falsely. The utility of the N400 in discriminating subjects who have knowledge about a crime from those who do not was examined in this study. Subjects viewed a videotape of either an enacted burglary (guilty condition) or scenes from the city of New York (innocent condition). They then read crime-relevant phrases that had true or false completions but were not required to make any overt response as to the statements' truth. Post hoc analyses indicated that 78% of subjects could be correctly classified as guilty or innocent. Applying the same classifier to two other samples resulted in a correct classification rate of 73.2%. With further development, ERPs may become useful auxiliaries to current lie-detection techniques. This research was supported by research contract 87F315000 from the Central Intelligence Agency.We wish to thank William G. lacono and Gregory Gaines for their very helpful suggestions and comments and Dr. lacono for the use of his mock crime videotapes. We would also like to thank Rob Reinhart and Randi Lincoln for their assistance in data collection and analysis.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract