Extracting Concealed Information from Groups

• NCJ Number: 232899
• Journal: Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 55 Issue: 6 Dated: November 2010 Pages: 1607-1609
• Author(s): Ewout H. Meijer, Ph.D.; Fren T.Y. Smulders, Ph.D.; Harald L.G.J Merckelbach, Ph.D.
• Date Published: November 2010
• Length: 3 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Presented at the 185th Conference of the European Association for Psychology and Law, July 2-5, 2008, in Maastricht, The Netherlands, and the 21st Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, May 22-25, 2009, in San Cranscisco, CA.

Annotation

This report describes a variant of the skin conductance-based Concealed Information Test (CIT) that allows for the extraction of critical information from such groups.

Abstract

Lie detection procedures are typically aimed at determining guilt or innocence of a single suspect. Serious security threats, however, often involve groups, such as terrorist networks or criminal organizations. Twelve participants were given information about an upcoming (mock) terrorist attack, with specific instructions not to reveal this information to anyone. Next, each subject was subjected to a CIT, with questions pertaining to the details of the attack. Results showed that for every question, the average skin conductance response to the correct answer option differed significantly (p less than 0.05) from those to all other options. These results show that the information about the upcoming attack could be extracted from the group of terror suspects as a whole. (Published Abstract)