Week 9 Readings and Homework

(1) Project:  Spend at least seven hours moving your project forward this week - working on launching your study if its approved, or starting to draft your final report if you can't launch your study yet.  Your final report will need to include a description of your study and a description of related work with references.  Give a few lines of update here describing what you did on your project this week.

(2) Read this NYMag article: People Naturally Synch Their Bodies Breathing - and Skin.   Links to an external site.How might a person giving a lie detector test influence the physiology of the person being tested?

Links to an external site.

(3) Watch these short videos on lie detection using facial expressions and polygraphy:

Paul Ekman 2009 Dateline clip on catching a lier Links to an external site.

Big Think: Paul Ekman Links to an external site.

National Geographic: How to beat a polygraph test Links to an external site.

Bloomberg Business: Doug Williams speaks against polygraph Links to an external site.

Criticism of NSA's "truth about the polygraph" claims its all junk science because it's not accurate at detecting lies Links to an external site.

Interview with a leading lie detection researcher, Dr. Mark Frank Links to an external site.

(4) Suppose you are an activist acting ethically and morally, but the political regime disagrees with this activism and seeks to punish it. For example, Corrie Ten Boom practiced telling lies so that when the Nazis raided her home to capture Jews, who her family was hiding/helping them to escape to save their lives, the Jews would not be caught. How might you fool a lie detector test if this happened to you?

(5) Suppose you catch a well-known terrorist who detonated a bomb in a large New York City skyscraper. He claims that bomb was the only bomb he planted–you want to know if he’s telling the truth. Would you give him a lie detector test?  Why or why not?  

(6) Optional readings for science of deception detection:

Increasing Cognitive Load to Facilitate Lie Detection: The Benefit of Recalling an Event in Reverse Order" by Vrij et al., Law and Human Behavior Links to an external site.

Police Lie Detection Accuracy: The Effect of Lie Scenario, O'Sullivan, M Frank, et al. Law Human Behavior (2009) 33:530-538. Links to an external site.

Lie Detection - Recovery of the Periorbital Signal through Tandem Tracking and Noise Suppression in Thermal Facial Video by P. Tsiamyrtzis , J. Dowdall , D. Shastri , I. Pavlidis, M.G. Frank , P. Eckman, SPIE Conference (2005). Links to an external site.