Imposing Cognitive Load to Unmask Prepared Lies: A Recurrent Temporal Pattern Detection Approach

According to Vrij, the differences between liars and truth tellers are greater when interviewees report their stories in reverse order than in chronological order. We intend to explore such influences on the organization of behavior within the framework of the T-pattern model. This model grants the possibility to measure and compare behavior patterns between liars and truth tellers, not easily detectable without the use of such tools. Recalling stories in reverse order will produce cognitive overloading in subjects, because their cognitive resources are already partially spent on the lying task; this should emphasize non verbal differences between liars and truth tellers. During the experiment, we asked female students to report specific autobiographical episodes. We videotaped them as they reported the stories in chronological order or in reverse order after asking to lie about one of the stories. We focused in analyzing how people organize their communicative styles during both truthful and deceptive interactions.. We coded the video recordings, after establishing the ground truth, using Theme Coder 5 software. We are currently analyzing datasets using Theme 6 software.