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Deception and Decay: Verbal Lie Detection as a Function of Delay and Encoding Quality

2017; Elsevier BV; Volume: 6; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.04.002

2211-369X

Adam Charles Harvey, Aldert Vrij, Sharon Leal, Lorraine Hope, Samantha Mann,

Memory Processes and Influences

We examined the effect of encoding quality and retention interval on the verbal accounts of truth tellers and liars.Truthful and deceptive participants (N = 149) reported a social interaction immediately or after a three-week delay.To manipulate encoding quality, the content of the exchange was important for, and intentionally attended to by, all liars and half of truth tellers (intentional encoding) but unimportant for half of truth tellers (incidental encoding).In the immediate condition, truth tellers in the intentional condition reported more details than liars and truth tellers in the incidental condition.All truth tellers reported fewer details after a delay (cf.immediately) whereas liars reported equivalent detail at both retrieval intervals.No differences by veracity group emerged in detail reported after delay.The oft-reported finding 'truth tellers provide more detail than liars' holds true when the event is intentionally encoded by truth tellers who are interviewed without delay. Deception and Decay: Verbal lie detection as a function of delay and encoding qualityIn standard deception experiments, truth tellers and liars are interviewed immediately after experiencing an event, with the event typically being meaningful (or made meaningful) in some way to both truth tellers and liars (Vrij, 2008).This context may not reflect all real life situations involving deception.For instance, sometimes suspects and witnesses are interviewed after extended delays.Also, the incident of interest to investigators may simply not have been important for, and therefore may not have attracted the attention of truth tellers.The aim of the current study was to address these issues by examining the popular verbal veracity cue richness of detail (Nahari & Pazuelo, 2015; Nahari & Vrij, 2015).This feature of an account can be a diagnostic cue to deceit when truth tellers and liars are interviewed immediately after an event that was made meaningful to them (Amado, Arce, Fariña, & Vilarino, 2016; Masip, Sporer, Garrido & Herrero, 2005;Vrij, 2008).In such scenarios, truth tellers typically provide more detail than liars (Vrij, 2005(Vrij, , 2008(Vrij, , 2015)).Specifically, we examine how verbal behaviour of honest and deceptive interviewees varies as a function of two memorial factors relevant to many interview settings: encoding quality and delay.Most psychologically-based credibility assessment techniques assume that liars and truth tellers enter interviews with differing mental states (e.g.Granhag &