Background: People sometimes lie by deliberately leaving out information. Such omission lies can have different sizes: Lie tellers can deliberately omit less or more information. We examined the effect of omission size on verbal cues to deceit. Method: A total of 152 participants followed a target person during his mission in which he met two other persons. In the debrief interview, truth tellers reported all they could remember; small-omission lie tellers omitted one meeting and large-omission lie tellers omitted both meetings. The analyses focused on the parts of the mission all participants reported truthfully. We distinguished between essential information (parts of the mission surrounding the omission) and non-essential information (parts of the mission that were not close to the omission). We examined external, contextual, internal details, complications, common knowledge details, and self-handicapping strategies. We also measured participants' strategies. Results: Truth tellers reported more complications than both groups of lie tellers in both the essential and non-essential information parts. Lie tellers were more than truth tellers inclined to keep their story simple. Conclusion: It further supports the notion that omission lie tellers are inclined to keep their stories simple and that, perhaps because of that, complications emerged as a veracity indicator. Antecedentes: A veces las personas mienten deliberadamente omitiendo informaci & oacute;n. Las mentiras por omisi & oacute;n pueden tener tama & ntilde;os diferentes: los mentirosos pueden omitir m & aacute;s o menos informaci & oacute;n a prop & oacute;sito. Analizamos el efecto del tama & ntilde;o de la omisi & oacute;n en los indicios verbales asociados al enga & ntilde;o. M & eacute;todo: Un total de 152 participantes siguieron a un hombre durante una misi & oacute;n, en la que & eacute;ste se encontr & oacute; con otras dos personas. En la subsiguiente entrevista, a los que dec & iacute;an la verdad se les pidi & oacute; que narraran todo lo que pod & iacute;an recordar y a los que ment & iacute;an con una ligera omisi & oacute;n que omitieran un encuentro y a los que ment & iacute;an con una gran omisi & oacute;n que omitieran ambos encuentros. Los an & aacute;lisis se centraron en las partes de misi & oacute;n que todos los participantes contaron con sinceridad. Se distingue entre informaci & oacute;n esencial (omisi & oacute;n de informaci & oacute;n adyacente a la misi & oacute;n) e informaci & oacute;n no esencial (omisi & oacute;n de informaci & oacute;n no adyacente a la misi & oacute;n). Se analizan los detalles externos, contextuales e internos, las complicaciones, detalles de conocimiento com & uacute;n y las estrategias de auto-justificaci & oacute;n. Tambi & eacute;n se midieron las estrategias de los participantes. Resultados: Los que dec & iacute;an la verdad informaron de m & aacute;s complicaciones que ambos grupos de mentirosos, tanto en las partes esenciales como en las no esenciales de la informaci & oacute;n. Los mentirosos tend & iacute;an m & aacute;s que los sinceros a simplificar su relato. Conclusi & oacute;n: Se refuerza la idea de que los mentirosos tienden a simplificar su relato y que, tal vez por ese motivo, las complicaciones aparec & iacute;an como indicadores de veracidad.

Purpose When an event unfolds in a similar way on multiple occasions, investigators often need information about specific episodes. This study aims to gain new insights into strategies for eliciting episodic details about a repeated event by exploring the perspectives and approaches of experienced professionals sampled across a diverse range of fields. Design/methodology/approach The authors sampled 16 professionals from various fields, including medicine, law and other groups (e.g., airline investigator), who were highly experienced in their roles and who regularly interview people about repeated events. The professionals were asked about their approach to eliciting episodic details, and their responses were subjected to thematic qualitative analysis. Findings The professionals’ approach was broadly consistent with evidence-based recommendations; however, some promising avenues for further research exploration emerged – particularly the use of external evidence as retrieval cues and mental context reinstatement. Originality/value This research uses a relatively novel methodological approach by sampling professionals with extensive experience across diverse professional fields. The findings highlight the widespread applicability of repeated-event research and the need to broaden the current research scope to enhance its relevance and impact in the field.

In four experiments, we examined whether pairs of truth tellers could be distinguished from pairs of lie tellers by taking advantage of the fact that only pairs of truth tellers can refer to shared events by using brief expressions (high-context communication style). In Experiments 1 and 2, pairs of friends and pairs of strangers pretending to be friends answered (i) questions they likely had expected to be asked (e.g., ‘How did you first meet’?) and (ii) unexpected questions (e.g., ‘First, describe a shared event in a few words. Then elaborate on it’). Pairs were interviewed individually (Experiment 1, N = 134 individuals) or collectively (Experiment 2, N = 130 individuals). Transcripts were coded for the verbal cues details, complications, plausibility, predictability, and overlap (Experiment 1 only) or repetitions (Experiment 2 only). In two lie detection experiments observers read the individual transcripts in Experiment 3 (N = 146) or the collective transcripts in Experiment 4 (N = 138). The verbal cues were more diagnostic of veracity and observers were better at distinguishing between truths and lies in the unexpected than in the expected questions condition, but only when the pair members were interviewed individually.

Researchers in legal psychology have conducted an abundance of tightly controlled, artificial laboratory studies in order to maximize internal validity. However, given the tradeoff between internal validity and ecological validity, the research often has low ecological validity, which discourages practitioners from adopting the scientific findings. We suggest that researchers address the imbalance in the published research by conducting future studies that have greater ecological validity. A greater balance between internal and ecological validity would allow decision makers to draw conclusions from an amalgamation of studies that, combined, have high internal validity and high ecological validity. We offer three methodological recommendations to increase ecological validity: Using dependent measures that have more utility for real-world tasks, incorporating more personnel from real-world usage (e.g., police) in experimental tasks, and conducting more field research. We also suggest including more practitioners within research teams to design studies and to convey the findings to real-world practitioners.

We examined the Devil's Advocate Approach in combination with a model statement. Participants (N = 170) expressed their true or false opinions about a societal issue. They explained the reasons why they have a certain opinion (eliciting-opinion request), followed by reasons that go against their opinion (devil's advocate request). Half of the participants listened prior to these requests to a model statement in which someone argued eloquently about another topic than the topic the participant discussed. We expected truth tellers compared to lie tellers to show more passion and to sound more eloquent and less predictable when answering the eliciting-opinion request. Less pronounced differences were expected in answering the devil's advocate request, resulting in larger differences in responding to the two requests in truth tellers than in lie tellers. The model statement was expected to accentuate these effects. The hypotheses were supported particularly for eloquence and passion.

The current study examined the Cognitive Interview (CI) for eliciting information about an overheard conversation (planning a future crime). Interviews were conducted either in-person or via telephone. The CI elicited more information, and at a comparable accuracy level, in comparison to a structured interview (SI). The efficacy of the CI was not significantly influenced by whether the interview was conducted in-person or via telephone. It took more time to conduct the CI than the SI. Finally, various measures of efficiency showed that the CI was as or more efficient than the SI. Suggestions are offered about adapting the CI for telephone interviews.

People sometimes lie by omitting information. The information lie tellers then report could be entirely truthful. We examined whether the truthful information that lie tellers report in omission lies contains verbal cues indicating that the person is lying. We made a distinction between (i) essential information (events surrounding the omission) and non-essential information (the rest); and (ii) made a distinction between informing or not informing participants about the key event they witnessed. Participants followed a target person. Truth tellers reported all activities truthfully; lie tellers omitted the key event. Participants were or were not informed what this key event was. In the analyses we discarded the information truth tellers reported about the key event lie tellers omitted. Truth tellers reported more external and contextual details, more complications and fewer common knowledge details and self-handicapping strategies than lie tellers, but only when discussing essential information. Being informed had no effect.

Information elicited from witnesses is critical to the fight against terrorism. We trained experienced Israeli intelligence investigators to use the Cognitive Interview (CI) technique to enhance witnesses' reporting in real-world investigations of terrorism (e.g., stabbings). We examined 60 cases in which Jewish and Arab respondents (victims, witnesses, and occasional sources of intelligence information; civilians and soldiers) were interviewed initially with a standard protocol. All respondents were interviewed a second time: 30 with a standard protocol and 30 with a CI. Compared to using a standard protocol on the second interview, the CI elicited more information and also more new information (not already in the first interview), and the CI-elicited new information was rated as being more useful. The current results are compatible with other field studies and suggest that the CI should generalize to other real-world investigations and may be effective in several as-yet-untested contexts (e.g., cold cases, debriefing professionals).

Memory for prior contacts has several important applied implications, including contact tracing (for communicable diseases). Incomplete episodic memory reports, which occur across the developmental lifespan but are particularly relevant for children and older adults, may hamper such efforts. Prior research has shown that cognitively informed memory techniques may bolster recall of contacts in adults, but that work has not addressed the developmental efficacy of these techniques. Here we evaluated the effectiveness of such techniques for familiar and unfamiliar contacts within a sample of 9- to 89-year-olds in the context of an ongoing pandemic. The tested memory techniques bolstered recall across the lifespan, irrespective of whether the interview was conducted live with an interviewer or via a self-led interview. Children, emerging adults, and adults did not reveal any differences in memory productivity, however, older adults recalled fewer contacts. Implications for theory and application are discussed.

The verbal cues lie tellers spontaneously report during interviews are weak and unreliable (DePaulo et al., 20023; Vrij, Hartwig, & Granhag, 2019). Researchers therefore asked for interview protocols to be developed that would elicit such verbal cues (Vrij & Granhag, 2012). Ten years later several interview protocols have emerged (Vrij, Granhag et al., 2022), including Cognitive Credibility Assessment (Vrij, Fisher, & Blank, 2017; Vrij, Mann et al., 2021), Reality Interviewing (Bogaard et el., 2019; Colwell et al., 2007), the Strategic Use of Evidence (Granhag & Harwig, 2015; Hartwig et al., 2014) and the Verifiability Approach (Nahari, 2019; Palena et al., 2021). All these interview protocols focus on distinguishing between truthful and deceptive statements about alleged activities. However, practitioners are also interested in detecting lies when people discuss their opinions. The Devil’s Advocate Approach is the only interview protocol we are aware of aimed to distinguish between truthful and deceptive opinions. In this article we present the (scarce) Devil’s Advocate Approach research conducted to date.

Interviewees sometimes deliberately omit reporting some information. Such omission lies differ from other lies because all the information interviewees present may be entirely truthful. Truth tellers and lie tellers carried out a mission. Truth tellers reported the entire mission truthfully. Lie tellers were also entirely truthful but left out one element of the mission. In truth tellers' statements, only the parts that lie tellers were also asked to recall were analysed. Interviews were carried out via the Cognitive Credibility Assessment, Reality Interview, or standard interview protocol. Dependent variables were the details, complications and verifiable sources interviewees reported. A questionnaire measured three deception strategies: 'Tell it all', 'keep it simple' or 'paying attention to demeanour'. Lie tellers reported fewer details, complications and verifiable sources than truth tellers and reporting these variables was negatively correlated with the 'keep it simple' and 'demeanour' strategies. The type of interview protocol did not affect the results.

Adults’ claims of decades-old child maltreatment raise questions about how to obtain accurate memories about childhood events. In this study, adults who experienced a documented child maltreatment medical examination when they were 3 to 16 years old (Time 1) were interviewed 2 decades later (Time 2). The adults ( N = 115) were randomly assigned to one of three interview-protocol conditions: a standard forensic interview, the cognitive interview (CI) with mental reinstatement, or the CI with mental- and physical-context reinstatement. The CI increased accuracy by dampening reports of potentially schematic but nonexperienced information. Younger age at Time 1 was associated with memories that were less complete but not more inaccurate. A greater number of Time 2 posttraumatic-stress-disorder symptoms predicted both correct and incorrect (omissions and commissions, respectively) answers to specific questions and incorrect answers to misleading questions; commission errors were associated with Time 1 physical-abuse status. Theoretical implications and clinical and legal applications are discussed.

Practitioners ask whether verbal veracity cues are (i) diagnostic across populations and (i) resistant to countermeasures. We examined this by merging the three datasets reported by Vrij, Leal et al. (2020, 2022).Participants from Lebanon (n = 187), Mexico (n = 205) and South-Korea (n = 239) discussed a city-trip they had made (truth tellers, n = 328) or made up a story (lie tellers, n = 303) about such a trip. Some participants (n = 325) were informed about the relation between deception and complications, common knowledge details and self-handicapping strategies (informed participants), whereas others were not (uninformed participants). The dependent variables were total details, complications, common knowledge details, self-handicapping strategies and plausibility.All five variables discriminated truth tellers from lie tellers, but particularly complications and plausibility. These cues were diagnostic veracity indicators across different populations and remained diagnostic when we compared informed lie tellers with uninformed truth tellers.

Abstract Although recent work has expanded research on empirically informed forensic interviewing techniques outside the criminal context, no work that we are aware of has considered potential synergies for this research within the realm of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). The current chapter addresses the relation between forensic interviewing and ADR, and more specifically how techniques developed to interview forensic witnesses might be adapted for mediation. In so doing, we first review the research on mediation and forensic interviewing. Next we compare and contrast the two contexts on both psychological and legal dimensions. Finally, we examine areas of potential growth and future directions. By bringing together the work on potential synergies between the two realms, we hope to inspire others to expand further this nascent area of research.

Abstract The last thirty years has seen a transformation in deception research from passively observing subjects’ nonverbal behavior to actively interviewing subjects to elicit verbal cues to deceit. Although significant progress has been made, there is still much work to do in the rapidly developing field of verbal lie detection. In this contribution, we briefly discuss the current status of the field. We outline the four interview protocols most frequently discussed in the scientific literature to date—Assessment Criteria Indicative of Deception (ACID), Cognitive Credibility Assessment (CCA), Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE), and Verifiability Approach (VA)—followed by the empirical support for these protocols. We then present ideas on how to move the field of verbal lie detection forward.

Aim: We examined the ability to detect lying about opinions with the Devil’s Advocate Approach and Verifiability Approach. Method: Interviewees were first asked an opinion eliciting question to argue in favour of their alleged personal view. This was followed by a devil’s advocate question to argue against their alleged personal view. Since reasons that support rather than oppose an opinion are more readily available in people’s minds, we expected truth tellers’ responses to the opinion eliciting question to include more information and to sound more plausible, immediate, direct, and clear than their responses to the devil’s advocate question. In lie tellers these patterns were expected to be less pronounced. Interviewees were also asked to report sources that could be checked to verify their opinion. We expected truth tellers to report more verifiable sources than lie tellers. A total of 150 participants expressed their true or false opinions about a societal issue. Results: Supporting the hypothesis, the differences in plausibility, immediacy, directness, and clarity were more pronounced in truth tellers than in lie tellers (answers to eliciting opinion question sounded more plausible, immediate, direct, and clear than answers to the devil’s advocate question). Verifiable sources yielded no effect. Conclusions: The Devil’s Advocate Approach is a useful tool to detect lies about opinions.

Previous research indicated that drawing is a strategic tool in investigations. However, little research has been conducted to determine how to introduce a sketch instruction into an investigative interview. The current experiment compared sketching and speaking separately (sketch-speak and speak-sketch conditions) with sketching and speaking synchronously to determine which recall method gathered the most information and elicited the most cues to deceit. Participants (N = 180) watched a video, half were asked to tell the truth (to a friendly agent), whereas the other half were asked to lie (to a corrupt agent) about the video in an interview. Participants were asked either to (i) sketch then speak, (ii) speak then sketch, or (iii) speak and sketch synchronously. Verbal statements and sketches were coded for total details, number of people, number of self-handicapping strategies and plausibility. The camera perspective of sketches was also examined. Truth tellers' sketches and verbal statements were rated as more plausible than those of lie tellers. This difference was found in all three recall methods with the largest effect emerging in the speaking and sketching synchronously condition. Truth tellers included more details than lie tellers in their verbal statements but not in their sketches. Conversely, truth tellers included more people than lie tellers in their sketches but not in their verbal responses. No veracity differences emerged in sketches nor verbal statements for self-handicapping strategies. However, participants in the speaking and sketching synchronously recall method included more sketch self-handicapping strategies than those in the other recall conditions. Additionally, participants in the speak and sketch synchronously method reported more verbal details than those who spoke and then sketched. Effects were not large enough between speaking in isolation of sketching and also sketching and speaking synchronously to determine which recall method is best to detect deceit. However, sketching and speaking synchronously emerged as the most beneficial method for information-gathering.

Background/objectives: Practitioners frequently inform us that lying through omitting information is relevant to them, yet this topic has been largely ignored by verbal lie detection researchers. Method: In the present experiment participants watched a video recording of a secret meeting between three people. Truth tellers were instructed to recall the meeting truthfully, and lie tellers were instructed to pretend that one person (John) was not there. Participants were or were not exposed to a Model Statement during the interview. The dependent variables were ‘total details’ and ‘complications’. Results: Truth tellers reported more complications than lie tellers but lie tellers reported more details than truth tellers. The Model Statement resulted in more complications and details being reported. The Veracity x Model Statement interaction effect was not significant. In terms of self-reported strategies, the main veracity difference was that truth tellers were more inclined to ‘be detailed” than lie tellers. Discussion: We discuss the atypical finding (most details reported by lie tellers) and ideas for future research.

A preferred strategy amongst lie tellers is to keep their stories simple. In the present experiment we examined a possible way lie tellers could use to achieve this: Pretending to have a general poor memory. We gave participants the opportunity to reveal this poor memory in a general memory recall test. Participants first saw a video-recorded secret meeting and were led to believe that they would be interviewed about this video. Participants were instructed to recall it either truthfully [truth tellers] or deliberately distort some facts [lie tellers] and were given time to prepare themselves for the forthcoming interview. In the interview we showed participants a video [labelled tricks video] to test their general memory. We asked them to report this tricks video in as much detail and as accurately as possible. We finished the interview after this recall and never asked them to recall the secret meeting video. Half of the participants were asked to sketch while recalling the tricks video. Sketching is known to facilitate recall. As predicted, those who thought they had to lie about the secret meeting video performed worse in recalling the tricks video than those who thought they had to tell the truth about the secret meeting video, particularly in the sketching condition.

Over the last 30 years deception researchers have changed their attention from observing nonverbal behaviour to analysing speech content. However, many practitioners we speak to are reluctant to make the change from nonverbal to verbal lie detection. In this article we present what practitioners believe is problematic about verbal lie detection: the interview style typically used is not suited for verbal lie detection; the most diagnostic verbal cue to deceit (total details) is not suited for lie detection purposes; practitioners are looking for signs of deception but verbal deception researchers are mainly examining cues that indicate truthfulness; cut-off points (decision rules to decide when someone is lying) do not exist; different verbal indicators are required for different types of lie; and verbal veracity indicators may be culturally defined. We discuss how researchers could address these problems.