Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

negative statements or complaints, fewer spontaneous corrections to the story,
36 41, 46
and lower frequencies of admitting to lack of clear recall).
The same set of reviews, involving analysis of over 150 studies, suggested
that several criteria used in both the Statement Validity Assessment and Reality
Monitoring failed to differentiate true from false statements. These criteria
included the degree of apparent complexity in statements, the presence of
unexpected complications, self references, reports of subjective mental states,
superfluous details, and descriptions of verbal and nonverbal interactions. Taken
as a whole, neither the criteria set from the Statement Validity Assessment nor
the Reality Monitoring approach appears sufficiently reliable and valid to serve
as a unitary technique for evaluating the veracity of subject statements. 36,46-48,50-53
However, some of the component elements show promise.
Paralinguistic Cues
Most paralinguistic cues do not appear to be effective; however, voice stress
analysis may merit further investigation. Paralinguistic cues encompass all those
behaviors associated with the production of speech but separate from the actual
content. As with nonverbal cues, the results appear rather disappointing. The rate at
which subjects speak, the presence of various disturbances suggesting uncertainty
(e.g., “ums” and “ahs”), the length of verbal response, various kinds of pauses,
response latency, and loudness do not appear to be reasonable cues to deception. 41
However, the amount of time spent talking in a response, higher voice pitch, or
other indications of voice tension appear to be potentially useful cues. Again, the
changes in pitch or indications of voice tension have generally been sufficiently
small that the unaided ear cannot discriminate them reliably. Previous reviews of
voice stress technologies soundly criticized their reliability and validity. 29 Despite
this, recurrent positive findings in this area 36,41,54,56 may suggest that voice stress
analysis may have been dismissed prematurely.
Global Judgments
Focusing on specific cues to deception may actually narrow an observer’s
focus to the point of neglecting data that could be important for validating the
source or the information itself. Instead of relying on the presence or absence
of a specific cue to deception, some research has recorded global judgments
of observers who are asked to synthesize their observations and assess subject
behavior. These synthesized assessments show some promise in differentiating true
vs. fabricated statements. 41,57 Specifically, people who were accurately identified
as being deceptive were more likely to have been assessed by observers as less
cooperative, more uncertain, more nervous, more ambivalent, more inconsistent
in content presentation, less friendly or pleasant, and more expressive facially.
Moderator Variables
Many other variables may have an impact on our capacity to detect
deception effectively. Examples of relevant research include studies on the impact
of interviewer and interviewee personality characteristics, 58,59,60,61,62,63 expectancy
effects, 13,64 social biases, 65-67 and interviewer and interviewee confidence, 68,69 to
49