Using response time measures to assess "guilty knowledge".

Abstract

How can a suspect's guilt or innocence be reliably tested? The validity of the polygraph, which measures changes in physiological arousal during a "guilty knowledge" test, is controversial (e.g., T. R. Bashore & P. E. Rapp, 1993; T. P. Cross & L. Saxe, 1992; D. T. Lykken, 1998; J. P. Rosenfeld, 1995; R. Steinbrook, 1992). One alternative to the polygraph examines event-related potentials recorded during a memory interference task (L. A. Farwell & E. Donchin, 1991). The present study extended this paradigm to determine whether response times (RTs) can accurately identify participants possessing specific guilty knowledge. Results from Experiment 1 showed that RT alone can reliably discriminate "guilty" from "innocent" participants. Experiments 2a and 2b indicated that an RT-based paradigm is more resistant to strategic manipulation than previously suggested (Farwell & Donchin, 1991). This RT-based paradigm may be a viable alternative to the polygraph for detecting guilty knowledge.

Electromyographic evidence for response conflict in the exclude recognition task

“…The present behavioral results substantially replicate previous published data Jacoby, Woloshyn, & Kelley, 1989;Seymour & Kerlin, 2008;Seymour et al, 2000). Namely, filler responses were faster and more accurate than target and probe responses, and probe responses were significantly slower and less accurate than target responses, although the differences between these responses were smaller than when either stimulus type was compared with fillers.…”

“…In addition to probe and target items, 24 unstudied filler phrases were randomly selected for each participant, for a total stimulus set of 36 phrases. In general, this procedure was similar to previous exclude recognition paradigms using verbal stimuli (Jacoby, 1991;Jacoby, Woloshyn, & Kelley, 1989;Seymour & Kerlin, 2008;Seymour et al, 2000). In particular, we replicated the procedure previously reported in Seymour et al but added the EMG measure.…”

“…After the participants had been connected to the physiological recorder and moved into position, they received sev- [F(2,44) 26.94, p .001]. As in previous reports using similar procedures (Jacoby, Woloshyn, & Kelley, 1989;Seymour & Kerlin, 2008;Seymour et al, 2000), probe responses were slower and less accurate on average than both target and filler responses. Figure 6 and the pairwise t tests shown in Table 1 reveal that probe responses were significantly slower than both target and filler responses.…”

The revealing glance: Eye gaze behavior to concealed information

“…Commonly used dependent measures in this modified CIT variant are event-related potentials (e.g., Allen, Iacono, & Danielson, 1992;Farwell & Donchin, 1991; for a review, see Rosenfeld, 2011) and reaction times (e.g., Seymour & Kerlin, 2008;Seymour et al, 2000;Verschuere et al, 2010). Farwell and Donchin, for example, could differentiate between probes and neutral items for "guilty" participants because the probes elicited an eventrelated potential in the EEG known as the P300.…”

A review of the polygraph: history, methodology and current status

“…Reaction time (RT) has been found to be similarly affected by the orienting reflex (Seymour, Seifert, Shafto, & Mosmann, 2000) and RT-based CIT research has subsequently been progressing steadily over the past 14 years, reporting accuracy rates rivalling those of the traditional three-channel polygraph CIT (see Varga, Visu-Petra, Miclea & Bus, 2014, for a recent review).…”