Question

Who used physiological traits for the first time to detect the deception?

Answer 1

Attempts to detect deception by means of physiological measurement have evolved over more than 100 years. Combining elaborated interrogation procedures with capturing the bodily responses of the electrodermal, cardiovascular, and pulmonary systems brought forth specific procedures and measurement techniques. Nevertheless, a specific physiological pattern accompanying lying was not found in these measures. Yet, the Concealed Information Test (CIT), which classically uses a multichannel recording of physiological measures mostly related to the autonomic nervous system, proved to differentiate between concealed (e.g., crime-related) knowledge and actually absent knowledge (of an innocent person) with remarkable accuracy. From the very beginning of its application, research questions referred to the diagnostic value and the incremental information of each measure, the specific mental processes reflected in the various measures, and, particularly later with technical development, the exploration of new measures. From the applied perspective, the susceptibility of the CIT to countermeasures, leakage of crime-related information to innocents, the importance of the context in which the CIT is applied, or the influence of memory distortions, were prominent questions. Besides providing a brief overview of detection-of-deception paradigms, this chapter focuses on the CIT with “classic” polygraphic measurement, for which it summarizes the development of research lines until the present.