NCJ Number
163075
Journal
Polygraph Volume: 24 Issue: 4 Dated: (1995) Pages: 275-289
Date Published
1995
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Without the apprehension and arousal experienced in real cases, the validity of the results of laboratory simulations of polygraph examinations is problematic.
Abstract
Untrained and inexperienced psychologists have, from time to time, been testing college students in mock theft scenarios and have made grave pronouncements about polygraph validity in the field. To infer field validity from laboratory research results, the population must be appropriate; scenarios realistic; arousal levels like that in the field; examiners well-trained; field instruments used; and standard test formats used with accompanying pretest, questions formulation, and analytic method. The data presented in this paper suggest that researchers may be able to establish thresholds to know when arousal is sufficient, but the data for those thresholds must be more sophisticated and drawn from field data processed by computer instruments. When thresholds are established, researchers can do more to determine what kind of inducements are useful in developing appropriate arousal levels. The scenarios in laboratory research should represent the kind of field testing the researcher wants to study. Even when theft is the topic under study, the common mock- crime theft scenario may be inadequate. Simulating field conditions is not always necessary or even useful in some types of developmental research, but when researchers want to know about field accuracy or utility, or want to apply their findings to field use, then they must match field conditions as closely as possible with representative subject populations, standard test formats, and the accompanying analytic technique, imaginative scenarios, and a setting that creates arousal that approximates that in field psychophysiological detection of deception. 5 tables and 37 references