Increasing cognitive load to facilitate lie detection: the benefit of recalling an event in reverse order

Aldert Vrij; Samantha A Mann; Ronald P Fisher; Sharon Leal; Rebecca Milne; Ray Bull

doi:10.1007/s10979-007-9103-y

Increasing cognitive load to facilitate lie detection: the benefit of recalling an event in reverse order

Law Hum Behav. 2008 Jun;32(3):253-65. doi: 10.1007/s10979-007-9103-y. Epub 2007 Aug 13.

Authors

Aldert Vrij¹, Samantha A Mann, Ronald P Fisher, Sharon Leal, Rebecca Milne, Ray Bull

Affiliation

¹ Psychology Department, University of Portsmouth, King Henry Building, King Henry 1 Street, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK. aldert.vrij@port.ac.uk

PMID: 17694424
DOI: 10.1007/s10979-007-9103-y

Abstract

In two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that (a) the difference between liars and truth tellers will be greater when interviewees report their stories in reverse order than in chronological order, and (b) instructing interviewees to recall their stories in reverse order will facilitate detecting deception. In Experiment 1, 80 mock suspects told the truth or lied about a staged event and did or did not report their stories in reverse order. The reverse order interviews contained many more cues to deceit than the control interviews. In Experiment 2, 55 police officers watched a selection of the videotaped interviews of Experiment 1 and made veracity judgements. Requesting suspects to convey their stories in reverse order improved police observers' ability to detect deception and did not result in a response bias.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Cognition*
Cues
Deception*
Female
Humans
Male
Mental Recall*
Nonverbal Communication
Signal Detection, Psychological*
Truth Disclosure