Deception Through Verbal And Microexpressive Cues
Introduction:
Lucy Akehurst graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a master’s degree in Psychology. Shortly thereafter, she decided to return to school and pursue her PhD, which she received in 1997. During this time period, she focused her studies on deception research, where she specifically honed her study in on nonverbal cues of deceit, Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA), and how she could affect public perception of both. Akehurst is currently an undergraduate teacher at the University of Portsmouth, where she teaches forensic psychology, and child forensic studies. She also lectures on other relevant topics in psychology at the University, and is currently in the process of creating a graduate program for the University in forensic psychology. Her areas of interest and past research include:
• Nonverbal cues of deception
• The analysis and application of Statement Validity Assessment (and more specifically
Criteria-Based Content Analysis) as a method for detecting deceit in written accounts
• The perceptions of lay people and professionals with regard to cues of deceit
• Interviewing children for legal purposes
(Akehurst, 2007)
Discussion:
One of Lucy Akehurst’s contributions comes in the area of “Rapid Judgments in Assessing Verbal and Nonverbal Cues: Their Potential for Deception Researchers and Lie Detection” (Vrij, et al., 2004). The goal of this report is summarized in the following:
“A study was devised to investigate to what extent observers:
a) Could make rapid yet reliable and valid judgments of the frequency of verbal and nonverbal behaviors of interviewees (liars and truth tellers)
And
b) Detect[ed] deceit after making these rapid judgments.”
(Vrij et al., 2004)
To accomplish this task, a simple experiment was devised. Five observers between the ages of 19-21 were selected; of which consisted two male, and three female participants. They had no prior knowledge of, or relations with, the...
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