ABSTRACT

The Concealed Information Test has been widely used in polygraph testing in order to assess whether a suspect holds information that he/she does not want to reveal. Recently, behavioral measures based on reaction times (RTs) have also been shown to reliably reveal the concealed information effect in an oddball paradigm, thereby called an RT-based Concealed Information Test (RT-based CIT). The present study aimed to assess the detection efficiency of the two methods (i.e., the polygraph–based CIT vs. the RT-based CIT) in a mock crime paradigm, using psychophysiological measures from answers to questions in the polygraph test, and RTs to images in the RT-based test. The results confirmed the identification of concealed information effects using both assessment techniques and revealed that the two methods have similar accuracy rates for the detection of deception.

KEYWORDS: deception detection, Concealed Information Test, polygraph, reaction times

PAGES:19-37