Detection of deception: Event‐related potential markers of attention and cognitive control during intentional false responses

Abstract

Successful deception requires the coordination of multiple mental processes, such as attention, conflict monitoring, and the regulation of emotion. We employed a simple classification task, assessing ERPs to further investigate the attentional and cognitive control components of (instructed) deception. In Experiment 1, 20 participants repeatedly categorized visually presented names of five animals and five plants. Prior to the experiment, however, each participant covertly selected one animal and one plant for deliberate misclassification. For these critical items, we observed significantly increased response times (RTs), error rates, and amplitudes of three ERP components: anterior P3a indicating the processing of task relevance, medial-frontal negativity reflecting conflict monitoring, and posterior P3b indicating sustained visual attention. In a blind identification of the individual critical words based on a priori defined criteria, an algorithm using two behavioral and two ERP measures combined showed a sensitivity of 0.73 and a specificity of 0.95, thus performing far above chance (0.2/0.2). Experiment 2 used five clothing and five furniture names and successfully replicated the findings of Experiment 1 in 25 new participants. For detection of the critical words, the algorithm from Experiment 1 was reused with only slight adjustments of the ERP time windows. This resulted in a very high detection performance (sensitivity 0.88, specificity 0.94) and significantly outperformed an algorithm based on RT alone. Thus, at least under controlled laboratory conditions, a highly accurate detection of instructed lies via the attentional and cognitive control components is feasible, and benefits strongly from combined behavioral and ERP measures.

Individual differences in ERPs during deception: Observing vs. demonstrating behavior leading to a small social conflict

“…Neuroimaging studies repeatedly found an increased activation of the ACC during deceptive responses (Langleben et al, 2002(Langleben et al, , 2005Sip et al, 2008). Likewise, ERP studies found larger (more negative) MFN amplitudes for deceptive compared to truthful answers, revealing a greater response conflict for deception (Gibbons et al, 2018;Johnson et al, 2005Johnson et al, , 2008Leue et al, 2012). This is in line with the notion that when responding deceptively, conflicts are prevalent and an inhibition of the truthful response is needed (see Chapter 2.2.…”

“…The P300 amplitude is the most prominent ERP analyzed in CIT studies (Leue & Beauducel, 2019;Meijer et al, 2014;Rosenfeld et al, 2013). Yet, some studies also analyzed MFN amplitudes for participants completing the CIT (Gibbons et al, 2018;Leue et al, 2012). They found enlarged MFN amplitudes for probe compared to irrelevant items (Gibbons et al, 2018;Leue et al, 2012).…”

“…Yet, some studies also analyzed MFN amplitudes for participants completing the CIT (Gibbons et al, 2018;Leue et al, 2012). They found enlarged MFN amplitudes for probe compared to irrelevant items (Gibbons et al, 2018;Leue et al, 2012). This pattern of MFN amplitudes revealed that denying knowledge of the probe items was accompanied by response conflicts.…”

A meta-analysis of the P3 amplitude in tasks requiring deception in legal and social contexts

“…Of these 118 references several primary studies had to be excluded because of the following reasons: (1) k = 13 studies investigated electrodermal parameters (e.g., skin conductance level) or cardiovascular parameters (e.g., heart rate), (2) k = 4 studies investigated EEG frequency band data or connectivity data, (3) k = 9 studies investigated exclusively other stimulus-locked ERPs (e.g., N400 amplitude) or stimulus-locked P300 at occipital sites instead of parietal sites (Gibbons, Schnürch, Wittinghofer, Armbrecht, & Stahl, 2018), (4) k = 9 studies investigated response-locked or feedback-locked ERPs (e.g., response-locked medial frontal negativity, feedback-locked P3), (5) k = 2 studies investigated dipole sources in a deception task, (6) k = 9 deception studies did not report ERP findings but discussed the overall investigation of physiological parameters in deception studies or (7) were reviews (k = 3), (8) k = 1 study was not on deception although the P3 was investigated (Spapé, Hoggan, Jaccucci, & Ravaja, 2015), (9) k = 2 studies investigated the frontal P3 (Gibbons et al, 2018;Proverbio, Vanutelli, & Adorni, 2013), which conceptually differs from the parietal P3 (Kok, 2001), (10) k = 3 studies were performed in a financial context or in an individual vs.…”

Cognitive processes during deception about attitudes revisited: a replication study

“…Likewise, telling a lie relies on inhibiting the truth and formulating another answer; conflicts have to be monitored and solved ( Gombos, 2006 ; Sip et al., 2008 ). In ERP studies, larger MFN amplitudes occurred for deceptive compared to truthful responses ( Johnson et al., 2004 ; Kireev et al., 2008 ; Leue et al., 2012 ; Gibbons et al., 2018 ; Scheuble and Beauducel, 2020 ). Johnson et al.…”