Automated Human Screening for Detecting Concealed Knowledge

Screening individuals for concealed knowledge has traditionally been the purview of professional interrogators investigating a crime. But the ability to detect when a person is hiding important information would be of high value to many other fields and functions. This dissertation proposes design principles for and reports on an implementation and empirical evaluation of a non-invasive, automated system for human screening. The screening system design (termed an automated screening kiosk or ASK) is patterned after a standard interviewing method called the Concealed Information Test (CIT), which is built on theories explaining psychophysiological and behavioral effects of human orienting and defensive responses. As part of testing the ASK proof of concept, I propose and empirically examine alternative indicators of concealed knowledge in a CIT. Specifically, I propose kinesic rigidity as a viable cue, propose and instantiate an automated method for capturing rigidity, and test its viability using a traditional CIT experiment. I also examine oculomotor behavior using a mock security screening experiment using an ASK system design. Participants in this second experiment packed a fake improvised explosive device (IED) in a bag and were screened by an ASK system. Results indicate that the ASK design, if implemented within a highly controlled framework such as the CIT, has potential to overcome barriers to more widespread application of concealed knowledge testing in government and business settings

Password Memorability and Strength using an Image

In this study, the goal was to determine if the use of an image may help the average user to create strong and unique passwords, as well as give aid to remember the password that was created. Furthermore, we aim to determine if the image helps improve the perception of security. The way we went about this was to develop a survey that provides the user with an image and asks them to create a password that may be strong enough for a school account using that image. Four groups were tested, a control with no image and three test groups each featuring a unique image

Automated Scientifically Controlled Screening Systems (ASCSS)

The ability to detect when a person is hiding important information has high value in many applications. A new class of systems, termed autonomous scientifically controlled screening systems (ASCSS), is designed to detect individuals\u27 purposely hidden information about target topics of interest. ASCSS represents a systematic synthesis of structured interviewing, orienting theory, defensive response theory, non-invasive psychophysiological measurement, and behavioral measurement. To evaluate and enhance the design principles, an automated screening kiosk (ASK) system was constructed. The ASK system has been used in a physical security screening scenario in which participants constructed and attempted to smuggle a fake improvised explosive device (IED). The ASK system results indicate that ASCSS enables more widespread application of credibility assessment screening systems

Mobile Course Feedback System for Improving Student Engagement

This study focuses on the progression of a prototype, named KlassBase, aimed at improving generally low student engagement and compensating for shortcomings of currently-employed engagement methods. The prototype is a smartphone application designed to incentivize honest, frequent sharing of feedback between students and professors, and provide insight into the areas of a course which need improvement. We tested our assumptions about which features of the prototype would positively impact engagement, first with interviews to refine our approach, then with online surveys to measure the performance of our prototype against one currently utilized method for enabling students to provide feedback -- traditional end-of-course evaluations. The results of the survey indicate that participants generally believed KlassBase would have a greater impact on a course’s instruction, and more importantly, it would make them more engaged and active in the classroom

Informational Video Gaming in the Waiting Room

This study is testing the potential of a gamified method of conveying information and the ability of the game to influence people’s sentiment towards immunization. The most popular way that medical information and awareness is spread is in the form of pamphlets or flyers, even though many people either ignore them or do not retain much information from them. Perhaps a game paired with intermittent quiz questions that influence the overall score will improve overall retention as compared with plain reading. To test this hypothesis, a game was designed to include identical information as a pamphlet commony handed out in an office to see if it is more impactful and persuasive when used by patients in a waiting room

Design Principles for Signal Detection in Modern Job Application Systems: Identifying Fabricated Qualifications

Hiring a new employee is traditionally thought to be an uncertain investment. This uncertainty is lessened by the presence of signals that indicate job fitness. Ideally, job applicants objectively signal their qualifications, and those signals are correctly assessed by the hiring team. In reality, signal manipulation is pervasive in the hiring process, mitigating the reliability of signals used to make hiring decisions. To combat these inefficiencies, we propose and evaluate SIGHT, a theoretical class of systems affording more robust signal evaluation during the job application process. A prototypical implementation of the SIGHT framework was evaluated using a mock-interview paradigm. Results provide initial evidence that SIGHT systems can elicit and capture qualification signals beyond what can be traditionally obtained from a typical application and that SIGHT systems can assess signals more effectively than unaided decision-making. SIGHT principles may extend to domains such as audit and security interviews

A Systems Approach to Countermeasures in Credibility Assessment Interviews

Countermeasures, or techniques for hiding guilt during a credibility assessment examination, have long been an important topic in cognitive psychology and criminal justice fields. With recent IS research on automated screening systems, understanding the potential for countermeasures in this new paradigm is of increasing importance. This paper reports on a large experiment examining countermeasures in an automated deception detection screening context. The effectiveness of traditional countermeasure types (mental and physical) are examined, as well as an exploratory approach of trying several countermeasures at once. The exploratory approach was tested to investigate a proposed novel systems-inspired solution to countermeasures—triangulating on deception likelihood using multiple sensors measuring multiple behavioral and psychophysiological anomalies. The findings give credence to the proposition that monitoring multiple heterogeneous cues to deception may be a viable solution for mitigating the effectiveness of countermeasures

Proposing the Affect-Trust Infusion Model (ATIM) to Explain and Predict the Influence of High- and Low-Affect Infusion on Web Vendor Trust

Trust is just as essential to online business as it is to offline transactions but can be more difficult to achieve-especially for newer websites with unknown web vendors. Research on web-based trust development explains that web vendor trust can be created by both cognitive and affective (e.g., emotion-based) influences. But under what circumstances will emotion or cognition be more dominate in trust establishment? Theory-based answers to these questions can help online web vendors design better websites that account for unleveraged factors that will increase trust in the web vendor. To this end, we use the Affect Infusion Model and trust transference to propose the Affect-Trust Infusion Model (ATIM) that explains and predicts how and when cognition, through perceived website performance (PwP), and positive emotion (PEmo) each influence web vendor trust. ATIM explains the underlying causal mechanisms that determine the degree of affect infusion and the subsequent processing strategy that a user adopts when interacting with a new website. Under high-affect infusion, PEmo acts as a mediator between PwP and vendor trust; under low-affect infusion, PwP primarily impacts trust and PEmo is dis-intermediated. We review two distinct, rigorously validated experiments that empirically support ATIM. To further extend the contributions of ATIM, we demonstrate how use of specific contextual features-rooted in theory and that drive one\u27s choice of affect infusion and cognitive processing-can be leveraged into a methodology that we propose to further enhance user-centered design (UCD). We further detail several exciting research opportunities that can leverage ATIM

Cognitive Checkpoint: Emerging Technologies for Biometric-Enabled Watchlist Screening

This paper revisits the problem of individual risk assessment in the layered security model. It contributes to the concept of balancing security and privacy via cognitive-centric machine called an ’e-interviewer’. Cognitive checkpoint is a cyber-physical security frontier in mass-transit hubs that provides an automated screening using all types of identity (attributed, biometric, and biographical) from both physical and virtual worlds. We investigate how the development of the next generation of watchlist for rapid screening impacts a sensitive balancing mechanism between security and privacy. We identify directions of such an impact, trends in watchlist technologies, and propose ways to mitigate the potential risks

Taking “Fun and Games” Seriously: Proposing the Hedonic-Motivation System Adoption Model (HMSAM)

Hedonic-motivation systems (HMS)—systems used primarily to fulfill users’ intrinsic motivations—are the elephant in the room for IS research. Growth in HMS sales has outperformed utilitarian-motivation systems (UMS) sales for more than a decade, generating billions in revenue annually; yet IS research focuses mostly on UMS. In this study, we explain the role of intrinsic motivations in systems use and propose the hedonic-motivation system adoption model (HMSAM) to improve the understanding of HMS adoption. Instead of a minor, general TAM extension, HMSAM is an HMS-specific system acceptance model based on an alternative theoretical perspective, which is in turn grounded in flow-based cognitive absorption (CA). The HMSAM extends van der Heijden’s (2004) model of hedonic system adoption by including CA as a key mediator of perceived ease of use (PEOU) and of behavioral intentions to use (BIU) hedonic-motivation systems. Results from experiments involving 665 participants confirm that, in a hedonic context, CA is a more powerful and appropriate predictor of BIU than PEOU or joy, and that the effect of PEOU on BIU is fully mediated by CA sub-constructs. This study lays a foundation, provides guidance, and opens up avenues for future HMS, UMS, and mixed-motivation system research