Is anterior N2 enhancement a reliable electrophysiological index of concealed information?

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Is anterior N2 enhancement a reliable electrophysiological index of concealed information? journaltitle: NeuroImage articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.08.042 content_type: article copyright: © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Sophisticated Deception in Junior Middle School Students: An ERP Study

Sophisticated deception refers to the deception of others based on inferences of their mental states (e.g., answering honestly when inferring that the other will not believe their answer). Studying the brain mechanism of sophisticated deception in junior middle school students can provide physiological evidence for deception detection and deceptive ability measurement. Sixteen junior middle school students were asked to engage in different trial types (i.e., instructed truth/lie and chosen truth/lie), during which we recorded their response times (RT) along with electroencephalographic data to calculate event-related potentials (ERPs). We observed significant differences in amplitude [N2, P3, N450, and medial frontal negativity (MFN)] between chosen reactions (sophisticated deception and simple deception) and instructed reactions (instructed truth and instructed lie) in both the stimulus presentation and feedback stages. In the former, the task scores of participants in the chosen condition were significantly and positively correlated with the N2 amplitude over the central brain area during sophisticated deception. In the latter, the task scores of participants in the chosen condition were negatively correlated with the MFN amplitude over the left frontal and left frontocentral regions. Overall, deception intention, rather than simply making counterfactual statements, appears to underlie the increased demand for cognitive control in deceivers. This can be attributed to deceivers’ need to strongly consider their opponent’s mental state—the better the deceivers’ deceptive ability, the more they will make conjectures about the mental state of their opponent with sophisticated deception and monitor conflict; the less conflict they experience while answering honestly with the intention to deceive, the more conflict may arise when the results of their deception are inconsistent with these conjectures

The effect of mental countermeasures on neuroimaging-based concealed information tests

During the last decade and a half, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to determine whether it is possible to detect concealed knowledge by examining brain activation patterns, with mixed results. Concealed information tests rely on the logic that a familiar item (probe) elicits a stronger response than unfamiliar, but otherwise comparable items (irrelevants). Previous work has shown that physical countermeasures can artificially modulate neural responses in concealed information tests, decreasing the accuracy of these methods. However, the question remains as to whether purely mental countermeasures, which are much more difficult to detect than physical ones, can also be effective. An fMRI study was conducted to address this question by assessing the effect of attentional countermeasures on the accuracy of the classification between knowledge and no-knowledge cases using both univariate and multivariate analyses. Results replicate previous work and show reliable group activation differences between the probe and the irrelevants in fronto-parietal networks. Critically, classification accuracy was generally reduced by the mental countermeasures, but only significantly so with region of interest analyses (both univariate and multivariate). For whole-brain analyses, classification accuracy was relatively low, but it was not significantly reduced by the countermeasures. These results indicate that mental countermeasure need to be addressed before these paradigms can be used in applied settings and that methods to defeat countermeasures, or at least to detect their use, need to be developed. HIGHLIGHTS: FMRI-based concealed information tests are vulnerable to mental countermeasures Measures based on regions of interest are affected by mental countermeasures Whole-brain analyses may be more robust than region of interest ones Methods to detect mental countermeasure use are needed for forensic applications

A Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience Investigation of Deceptive Communication

There is a rich literature on how people tell lies and detect them in others, but the underlying mechanisms are still poorly understood. The first aim of this thesis was to elucidate key cognitive and neural processes underlying cued (i.e., instructed) and uncued lies. The second aim, based on recent research suggesting a link between dishonesty and creativity, was to determine whether creative cognition contributes to deceptive communication. In a first behavioural study, performance on generating and detecting lies was measured in a socially interactive setting involving cued and uncued lies. Results of a multiple regression analysis showed that creativity predicted lying generation ability: more creative individuals were better liars than less creative people. In contrast, the ability to detect lies showed no association with creativity measures, suggesting that generating and detecting lies are distinct abilities. A second event-related potential (ERP) study investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the generation of uncued lies using a novel bluffing paradigm where participants lied at will. Results showed no stimulus-locked differences between uncued lies and truths, suggesting that decision processes leading to both required comparable cognitive resources. Once the uncued decision has been made, it requires strategic monitoring to keep track of the responses in order to maximize the gains regardless of whether the outcome is a lie or the truth as indexed by no response-locked differences between uncued lies and truths. Finally, parallel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and ERP studies were conducted to determine the role of creativity in countermeasure use in a concealed information paradigm requiring cued lying. Results showed that countermeasures degraded the neural signatures of deception and more so for more creative individuals. This work advances understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying deception as well as their dependence on individual differences in creative cognition