Focusing on my project, "Physiological Signs of Human Deception", I will provide a technical definition for specific terms related to this project. I retrieved much of this data from the Wikipedia website.
In order to understand lie detection, it's important to understand what is defined as a lie.
A lie is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement with the intention to deceive, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, or to avoid punishment. To lie is to state something one knows is false with the intention that it be taken for the truth by someone else. A liar is a person who is lying or who lies repeatedly.
Lying is typically used to refer to deceptions in oral or written communication. Other forms of deception, such as disguises or forgeries, are generally not considered lies, though the underlying intent may be the same; however, even a true statement can be considered a lie if the person making that statement is doing so to deceive. In this situation, it is the intent of being untruthful rather than the truthfulness of the statement itself that is considered.
There are also specific types of lies as listed and defined here: TYPES OF LIES
Okay, now that we have a greater understanding of what constitutes a lie and the various types of lies, we can move on to defining lie detection:
Lie detection is the practice of determining whether someone is lying. Activities of the body not easily controlled by the conscious mind are compared under different circumstances. Usually this involves asking the subject control questions where the answers are known to the examiner and comparing them to questions where the answers are not known.
Lie detection commonly involves the polygraph but voice stress analysis may be more common because it can be applied covertly and to voice recordings.
The polygraph detects changes in body functions or kinesics not easily controlled by the conscious mind such as skin conductivity.
An FMRI can be used to compare brain activity differences.
Also, cognitive chronometry, or the measurement of the time taken to perform mental operations, can be used to distinguish lying from truth-telling. Two recent instruments using cognitive chronometry for this purpose are the Implicit Association Test, or IAT and the Timed Antagonistic Response Alethiometer, or TARA.
However, one must also take into consideration, like all machines, there are ways to fooling lie detectors. For example, one may be able to control some of thier bodily functions. You can control your breathing which slows your heart rate, giving the lie detector the impression your confident in your answer, which leads one to believe you are telling the truth. Also, there is a long term way in which one can block the memory out or trick the mind into thinking something else. Perhaps there is something you did that was wrong or quite embarrassing, but when questioned about it, you can honestly say no, even though you're lying.
In speaking about fool- proof lie detection, one must discuss the lie detection methods that were tried and proven unreliable:
Brain fingerprinting uses electroencephalography to determine if an image is familiar to the subject. Electroencephalography is used to detect changes in brain waves. This could detect deception indirectly but is not a technique for lie detecting.
Truth drugs such as sodium thiopental are used for the purposes of obtaining accurate information from an unwilling subject. Information obtained by publicly-disclosed truth drugs has been shown to be highly unreliable, with subjects apparently freely mixing fact and fantasy. Much of the claimed effect relies on the belief of the subject that they cannot tell a lie while under the influence of the drug.
This is the information I have compiled to serve as the technical definitions for:
-a lie
-various types of lies
-lie detection
-reliable lie detectors
*polygraph
*voice stress analysis
*FMRI
-cognitive chronometry
*Implicit Association Test
*Timed Antagonistic Response Alethiometer
-unreliable lie detectors
*brain fingerprinting
*truth drugs
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