Deceptive deception: disfluencies are incorrectly interpreted as cues to deceptive speech

Abstract

There is no consensus in the literature about the role of disfluencies as cues to deception. The current study used an interactive picture-description game to collect speech data of speakers and veracity assessments of listeners engaged in a socially meaningful interaction. The paradigm was implemented so that not only statement veracity (i.e., true or false) could be analysed, but also speaker intention (i.e., wanting or not wanting to be believed) and listener decision (i.e., believing or not believing the speaker). The goal was to test whether veracity, intention, and decision could be predicted based on disfluency patterns, using Multivariate Pattern Analysis. We observed that veracity and intention could not be predicted above chance on the basis of disfluency features, while listeners based their decision on these patterns. These results suggest that listeners wrongly interpret disfluencies as cues to deception.