Statement analysis, verbal cues to deception and interview techniques to elicit cues to deception are of high interest in forensic psychology currently. But I have a question from the field. It seems as if the overwhelming majority of real world statements are obtained from interviews using methods and techniques that are not conducive to aiding verbal statement analysis. Although we wish information-gathering, cognitive and strategic interviewing techniques were already more prevalent in the field, the reality is that they are not the most commonly employed methods yet. (In the United States.)
Is there current research or field experimentation aimed at seeing where verbal statement analysis can be utilized in some capacity on statements which are predominantly responses to posed questions and which do not contain a free-narrative recall? Are all of the techniques invalid in this commonplace circumstance, or do any of them show potential to be adapted in some way to fit statements obtained from non-ideal interview techniques?
If you had the opportunity to experiment with interviews from suspects and witnesses from an old case (for your own curiosity, not to make a report or recommendation) what would you try? What would you do to address the problem of statements originating from interviews which were conducted using more "traditional" methods employed by law enforcement, which are comprised of responses to interviewer questions, and perhaps only a couple instances of opportunities for the interviewee to give a short, free- narrative responses to a handful of questions during the interview? Comparing and contrasting elements of the statements about significant points of the case across interviews? Combining responses into categories according to their topic or relevance, and then seeing if verbal deception detection techniques yield anything that might have been helpful to law enforcement at the time?
Thank you for any creative or "what if" ideas you may be willing to share. I suppose this isn't so much a research question as it is a "what would you monkey around with" if you had a free opportunity to? Can any of what we already know be adapted in some way to shed light on imperfect statements?
Thank you for responding. I wonder whether focusing more on cues correlated with deceit rather than systems to detect cues to truthfulness would be worth trying. (Even though the strongest evidence is still for using truth detecting techniques at this time...)
Simon Stephens Thank you! I've read myself silly about most verbal cues to deception and techniques to detect deception. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of all of them is dependent upon interview style. So the methods aren't valid if I try to use them in the wrong context! I would be interested to see whether similar methods might be developed to analyze statements obtained from stereotypical interrogation interviews conducted in the past.
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