Effects of Electroencephalogram Neurofeedback Intervention on Blood C-Reactive Protein Levels in Astronauts Attending 2-Week Long Analog Moon Mission

The human organism is affected by multiple stressors every single day, especially during extremely demanding activities. It needs a method to regulate itself better. One of the stressors that is affecting humans is social isolation. The state of prolonged isolation happens during space missions. In this study, 40 analog astronauts attended a two-week-long mission. The experimental group had EEG neurofeedback training intervention performed on a daily basis, while the control group remained isolated without neurofeedback. The results let us take this non-invasive intervention under consideration, while debating the methods to lower the physiological stress reaction in humans that are exposed to extremely hard circumstances. Although not statistically significant, the trends observed give us direction towards other research to confirm EEG neurofeedback as a method to lower cell stress response levels.

Assessing the efficacy of baselining in deception detection: A comparative analysis of the reality interview and structured interview

Detecting deception is challenging; there exists no universal cue that gives away deceit and people vary greatly in how they communicate. One way to potentially improve deception detection is by comparing multiple responses of the same individual to identify verbal deviations - a method known as baselining. This study examined the impact of baselining embedded in a specific interview protocol to improve lie detection. Participants (N = 179) viewed mock crimes and were instructed to lie or tell the truth about what they witnessed. Next, they were interviewed including a truthful baseline (Reality Interview Modified: RIM), or no baseline (Reality Interview: RI; Structured Interview: SI). Results showed that truth tellers in the SI and RI conditions provided more details than liars during free recall, while no detail differences emerged for the RIM condition. Follow-up questions in all conditions showed truth tellers offered more details than liars. Surprisingly, we found no evidence that verbal deviations from a baseline can be used as effective indicators of deception. In sum, further research is needed to explore the best application of baselining for lie detection purposes.

'I like you so . . . ': how transgressor and interviewer likeability and familiarity influence children's disclosures

This study examined how children's age and their ratings of the likeability of a transgressor (E1) and an interviewer (E2) influenced their testimonies after witnessing a theft. Children (N = 152; ages 7-13 years) witnessed E1 steal $20 from a wallet. E1 then asked the children to lie and say that they did not take the money. Children were interviewed about their experience with E1 and completed two questionnaires about E1 and E2. Children who reported higher likeability scores with E1 were more likely to attempt to conceal the theft and more willing to keep it a secret. Children who reported higher likeability scores with E2 were more likely to indirectly disclose the theft. Age also played a role in children's ability to maintain their concealment. Results have important implications for professionals who interview children and suggest that more research is needed to examine ways to increase children's comfort with interviews/interviewers.

Mnemonic Techniques and Lie Detection: Accuracy of Truth and Deception Judgments in Repeated Accounts

This study was an examination into whether the use of memory-enhancing techniques (mnemonics) in interviews can be helpful to distinguish truth tellers from liars. In the previous study (Izotovas et al., 2018), it was found that when mnemonic techniques were used in the interview immediately after the event, truth-tellers reported more details than liars in those immediate interviews and again after a delay. Moreover, truth-tellers, but not liars, showed patterns of reporting indicative of genuine memory decay. In the current experiment, participants (n = 92) were asked to read the repeated statements reported by participants in the Izotovas et al.’s (2018) study and decide whether the statements they read were truthful or deceptive. One group of participants (informed condition) received information about the findings of the previous study before reading the statement. The other group received no information before reading the statement (uninformed condition). After participants made veracity judgements, they were asked an open-ended question asking what factors influenced their credibility decision. Although truthful statements were judged more accurately in the informed condition (65.2%) than in the uninformed condition (47.8%), this difference was not significant. In both conditions deceptive statements were detected at chance level (52.2%). Participants who relied on the self-reported diagnostic verbal cues to deceit were not more accurate than participants who self-reported unreliable cues. This could happen because only the minority of participants (27.4%) in both conditions based their decisions on diagnostic cues to truth/deceit.

A Paradigm Shift in the Implementation of Ethics Codes in Construction Organizations in Hong Kong: Towards an Ethical Behaviour

Due to the economic globalization which is characterized with business scandals, scholars and practitioners are increasingly engaged with the implementation of codes of ethics as a regulatory mechanism for stimulating ethical behaviours within an organization. The aim of this study is to examine various organizational practices regarding the effective implementation of codes of ethics within construction contracting companies. Views on ethics management in construction organizations together with the recommendations for improvement were gleaned through 19 semi-structured interviews, involving construction practitioners from various construction companies in Hong Kong. The findings suggested some practices for effective implementation of codes of ethics in order to diffuse ethical behaviours in an organizational setting which include; introduction of effective reward schemes, arrangement of ethics training for employees, and leadership responsiveness to reported wrongdoings. Since most of the construction companies in Hong Kong have codes of ethics, emphasis is made on the practical implementation of codes within the organizations. Hence, implications were drawn from the recommended measures to guide construction companies and policy makers.

Does eyewitness and interviewer gender influence children's reports? An experimental analysis of eyewitness and interviewer gender on children's testimony

This study examines how children's age, gender and interviewer gender affected children's testimony after witnessing a theft. Children (N = 127, age = 6-11 years) witnessed an experimenter (E1) find money, which he/she may/may not have taken. E1 then asked the children to falsely deny that the theft occurred, falsely accuse E1 of taking the money, or tell the truth when interviewed by a second experimenter. Falsely denying or falsely accusing influenced children's forthcomingness and quality of their testimony. When accusing, boys were significantly more willing than girls to disclose about the theft earlier and without being asked directly. When truthfully accusing, children gave lengthier testimony to same-gendered adults. When denying, children were significantly more willing to disclose the theft earlier to male interviewers than to females. As children aged, they were significantly less likely to lie, more likely to disclose earlier when accusing, and give lengthier and more consistent testimony.

Using the model statement to elicit information and cues to deceit in interpreter-based interviews

We examined how the presence of an interpreter during an interview affects eliciting information and cues to deceit, while using a method that encourages interviewees to provide more detail (model statement, MS). A total of 199 Hispanic, Korean and Russian participants were interviewed either in their own native language without an interpreter, or through an interpreter. Interviewees either lied or told the truth about a trip they made during the last twelve months. Half of the participants listened to a MS at the beginning of the interview. The dependent variables were 'detail', 'complications', 'common knowledge details', 'self-handicapping strategies' and 'ratio of complications'. In the MS-absent condition, the interviews resulted in less detail when an interpreter was present than when an interpreter was absent. In the MS-present condition, the interviews resulted in a similar amount of detail in the interpreter present and absent conditions. Truthful statements included more complications and fewer common knowledge details and self-handicapping strategies than deceptive statements, and the ratio of complications was higher for truth tellers than liars. The MS strengthened these results, whereas an interpreter had no effect on these results.

Efficacy of combining interview techniques in detecting deception related to bio-threat issues

The purpose of this project was to assess the detecting deception efficacy of three well-validated "detecting deception" methods - i.e., forced choice testing (FCT), modified cognitive interviewing (MCI) and autobiographical implicit association testing (aIAT) - when applied to the issue of bio-threat. The detecting deception accuracies of FCT and MCI were 81% and 75%, respectively. Although the aIAT mean response times in block 5 differed significantly between deceptive and truthful persons, the classification accuracy was low. FCT alone reduced the group of 64 persons to 11 and detected 50% of the liars; the false positive rate was 9%. MCI alone reduced the group of 64 to 24 and detected 92% of the liars; the false positive rate was 54%. When FCT was paired with MCI, 75% of liars were detected and the false positive rate was 13%. Forced choice testing and MCI show promise as methods for detecting deception related to bio-threat under low-base-rate conditions. These methods took little time, enhanced the odds of detecting deceptive individuals and exhibited high positive likelihood ratios, suggesting that they have merit as screening tools. The aIAT required more time and was less accurate but may still serve as a useful screening tool.

Interviewing to Detect Deception

DePaulo et al.’s (2003) meta-analysis of verbal and nonverbal cues to deception showed that cues to deception are faint and unreliable. If liars do not spontaneously display diagnostic cues to deceit, a logical step is to make sure that investigators elicit or enhance such cues in interviews through specific interview technique. Such interview techniques were scarce in the nonverbal and verbal cues to deception domain, but recently researchers have developed alternative protocols that have their roots in cognition and are based on the assumption that questions can be asked that are more difficult for liars to answer than for truth tellers. They will be discussed in the first part of this article. Traditionally, lie detection in a forensic context concentrated on police-suspect interview settings. However, in the wake of high-profile international terrorist attacks, the importance of identifying terrorist networks and gathering intelligence about the activities of such groups has become paramount. Deception detection in intelligence interviews differs in several ways from deception detection in traditional police-suspect interviews and requires innovative deception research. In the second part of this article we discuss the emerging literature in this domain.

Self-reported health of people with intellectual disability

Self-reported health is an important outcome in the evaluation of health care but is largely ignored in favor of proxy-based reporting for people with an intellectual disability. This study briefly reviews the role of self-report in health assessment of people with intellectual disability and the challenges and recommendations that have emerged from the considerable body of research on interviewing and self-report. Limitations in current recommendations are addressed from the perspective of the cognition of self-report. The review describes conceptual directions for the reconciliation of the two contradictory themes in the treatment of self-report: the centrality given to personal perceptions and choices and the methodological concerns over the meaningfulness and validity of the self-reporting process.

Cues to deception and ability to detect lies as a function of police interview styles

In Experiment 1, we examined whether three interview styles used by the police, accusatory, information-gathering and behaviour analysis, reveal verbal cues to deceit, measured with the Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) and Reality Monitoring (RM) methods. A total of 120 mock suspects told the truth or lied about a staged event and were interviewed by a police officer employing one of these three interview styles. The results showed that accusatory interviews, which typically result in suspects making short denials, contained the fewest verbal cues to deceit. Moreover, RM distinguished between truth tellers and liars better than CBCA. Finally, manual RM coding resulted in more verbal cues to deception than automatic coding of the RM criteria utilising the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software programme. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of the three police interview styles on the ability to detect deception. Sixty-eight police officers watched some of the videotaped interviews of Experiment 1 and made veracity and confidence judgements. Accuracy scores did not differ between the three interview styles; however, watching accusatory interviews resulted in more false accusations (accusing truth tellers of lying) than watching information-gathering interviews. Furthermore, only in accusatory interviews, judgements of mendacity were associated with higher confidence. We discuss the possible danger of conducting accusatory interviews.

Interviewing children with the cognitive interview: Assessing the reliability of statements based on observed and imagined events

This paper investigated whether criteria stemming from the Reality Monitoring (RM) framework could be trusted to assess the reliability of statements obtained by the use of a cognitive interview (CI). Fifty-eight children, aged 10-11, participated. One-third watched a film about a fakir and were then interviewed according to a CI (n= 19). The remaining two-thirds made up a story about a fakir and were then interviewed according to either a CI (n= 21), or a structured interview (SI) (n= 18). The CI statements based on observed events contained more visual, affective, spatial and temporal information compared to CI statements based on imagined events. The CI statements based on imagined events did not differ from the SI statements based on imagined events. Considerable developmental work is recommended to turn the RM technique to a reliable test that could be used by practitioners.