Gina Villar

Charles Sturt University · School of Psychology

The aim of this study is to determine whether the presence of the interjection ‘um’ can distinguish between the deceptive and truthful speech of individuals who are practised in the art of impression management. A total of 50 truthful and 61 deceptive statements were extracted from the speech of celebrities participating in a televised comedy panel...

Despite the benefits to be gained from successfully feigning the emotion of remorse, few studies have addressed the identification of fabricated statements of remorse. We investigated whether there were differences in first person singular pronoun use between genuine versus deceptive displays of remorse in type-written statements. Results showed th...

Previous research has examined home-based reading practices in families with typically developing children, however, little is known about these activities in families with children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). This study describes the naturalistic interactions of 11 mothers and their children (7.4–12.9 years of age) during home-based read...

Purpose. The search for objective markers of a true versus false confession is an important but under-researched area. In the first study of its kind, we examined the utility of expressions of remorse as a marker of a true compared with a false oral versus written confession. Methods. We elicited both written and oral false confessional statements...

Previous research has examined home-based reading practices in families with typically developing children, however, little is known about these activities in families with children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). This study describes the naturalistic interactions of 11 mothers and their children (7.4–12.9 years of age) during home-based read...

It has been suggested that reduced assessment may lead to reduced student anxiety. Here we argue that it is not necessarily the case that reduced assessment is the most effective way to reduce student anxiety. In fact, for some units, the opposite may be true. When it comes to learning about research methods and statistics students often begin the...

Lying is a universal activity and the detection of lying a universal concern. Presently, there is great interest in determining objective measures of deception. The examination of speech, in particular, holds promise in this regard; yet, most of what we know about the relationship between speech and lying is based on the assessment of English speak...

The relationship between people's beliefs and their actual lying behaviour has received minimal attention in the literature. In the current study, we examined whether people's beliefs about vocal pitch were related to their pitch behaviour during deception. Thirty-nine university students participated in audio-taped interviews where, in a within-su...

To date, most investigations of false confessions have focused on their prevention rather than their identification. In this study we investigated whether certain linguistic variables might help to distinguish between false confessional statements and true accounts. Using a within-subjects design, we elicited both false confessional statements and...

Previous studies have demonstrated a link between language behaviors and deception; however, questions remain about the role of specific linguistic cues, especially in real-life high-stakes lies. This study investigated use of the so-called filler, “um,” in externally verifiable truthful versus deceptive speech of a convicted murderer. The data rev...

Lying is a deliberate attempt to transmit messages that mislead others. Analysis of language behaviors holds great promise as an objective method of detecting deception. The current study reports on the frequency of use and acoustic nature of “um” and “like” during laboratory-elicited lying versus truth-telling. Results obtained using a within-part...

Previous research has identified linguistic markers of deception in English-speaking participants. Questions remain regarding the utility of such indicators in languages other than English. This study investigated the utility of pronouns as a linguistic marker of deception in Italian. Twenty native speakers of Italian gave their true and false opin...

Lying is a deliberate attempt to transmit messages that mislead others. Here, we examined the frequency of use of the so-called filler word 'um' during lying versus truth-telling in low-stakes laboratory-elicited lies (Study 1) and also in high-stakes real-life lies (Study 2). Results from a within-subjects false opinion paradigm showed that instan...