Kristina Suchotzki

• PhD
• Professor at Philipps University of Marburg

Lie detection techniques are frequently used, but most of them have been criticized for the lack of empirical support for their predictive validity and presumed underlying mechanisms. This situation has led to increased efforts to unravel the cognitive mechanisms underlying deception and to develop a comprehensive theory of deception. A cognitive a...

Developed as an alternative to traditional deception detection methods, the concealed information test (CIT) assesses recognition of critical (e.g., crime-relevant) “probes.” Most often, recognition has been measured as enhanced skin conductance responses (SCRs) to probes compared to irrelevant foils (CIT effect). More recently, also differentially...

Aims: Despite the widespread belief that alcohol makes the truth come out more easily, we know very little on how alcohol impacts deception. Given that alcohol impairs response inhibition, and that response inhibition may be critically involved in deception, we expected that alcohol intake would hamper lying. Methods: In total, 104 volunteers we...

The cognitive view on deception proposes that lying comes with a cognitive cost. This view is supported by the finding that lying typically takes longer than truth telling. Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide a means to unravel the cognitive processes underlying this cost. Using a mock-crime design, the current study (n=20) investigated the eff...

Purpose The reaction time‐based Concealed Information Test (RT‐CIT) can be used to reveal crime‐related memories based on an analysis of response latencies in a computerized task. While laboratory research shows high validity of the RT‐CIT in student samples, only very few studies have been conducted with forensic target groups. Methods We investi...

When trying to conceal one's knowledge, various ocular changes occur. However, which cognitive mechanisms drive these changes? Do orienting or inhibition-two processes previously associated with autonomic changes-play a role? To answer this question, we used a Concealed Information Test (CIT) in which participants were either motivated to conceal (...

The reaction time-based Concealed Information Test (RT-CIT) can be used to detect information a suspect wishes to conceal. While it is often argued that it is easily faked, empirical research on its vulnerability to faking is scarce. In three experiments, we tested whether receiving faking instructions enables guilty participants to fake an innocen...

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) enables the detection of certain (e.g., crime-relevant or personal) information, even if participants aim to conceal their knowledge. The current preregistered study investigated whether previously observed impairing effects of alcohol intoxication on participants’ performance in a reaction time CIT (RT CIT) fie...

Humans as social beings rely on information provided by conspecifics. One important signal in social communication is eye gaze. The current study (n = 93) sought to replicate and extend previous findings of attentional guidance by eye gaze in complex everyday scenes. In line with previous studies, longer, more and earlier fixations for objects cued...

Detecting whether a suspect possesses incriminating (e.g., crime-related) information can provide valuable decision aids in court. To this means, the Concealed Information Test (CIT) has been developed and is currently applied on a regular basis in Japan. But whereas research has revealed a high validity of the CIT in student and normal populations...

Lying occurs in many different forms and contexts. There are the caring parents, who tell their children that the beloved dog went to an animal farm (instead of dying), or the shop assistant who tells you that the clothes you are trying on are fitting you just perfectly. But there is also the banker, who leaves out the risks when advising investmen...

The Sheffield Lie Test (SLT) has been frequently used in laboratory research investigating basic mechanisms of deception. Its applied potential as a lie detection tool has been contested. The current two experiments used a reaction time SLT and investigated whether it can discriminate between participants who committed a mock crime and participants...

Srull and Wyer (1979) demonstrated that exposing participants to more hostility-related stimuli caused them subsequently to interpret ambiguous behaviors as more hostile. In their Experiment 1, participants descrambled sets of words to form sentences. In one condition, 80% of the descrambled sentences described hostile behaviors, and in another con...

The self-concept maintenance theory holds that many people will cheat in order to maximize self-profit, but only to the extent that they can do so while maintaining a positive self-concept. Mazar, Amir, and Ariely (2008, Experiment 1) gave participants an opportunity and incentive to cheat on a problem-solving task. Prior to that task, participants...

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) is a well-validated means to detect whether someone possesses certain (e.g., crime-relevant) information. The current study investigated whether alcohol intoxication during CIT administration influences reaction time (RT) CIT-effects. Two opposing predictions can be made. First, by decreasing attention to critic...

Research on trustworthiness indicates that non-native speakers are perceived as less trustworthy than native speakers. Research investigating whether people do indeed lie less well in a non-native language is, however, scarce and yielded inconsistent results. Two opposing predictions are possible. Based on the idea that lying is more demanding than...

In recent years, reaction time-based measures of deception and concealed information are becoming increasingly popular. Laboratory research has shown that lying and information concealment take reliably longer than simple truth telling. And whereas the use of some reaction time paradigms is so far restricted to theoretical research, other paradigms...

When embedded among a number of plausible irrelevant options, the presentation of critical (e.g., crime-related or autobiographical) information is associated with a marked increase in response time (RT). This RT effect crucially depends on the inclusion of a target/non-target discrimination task with targets being a dedicated set of items that req...

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) is a psychophysiological technique that allows for detecting crime-related knowledge. Usually, autonomic response measures are used for this purpose, but ocular measures have also been proposed recently. Prior studies reported heterogeneous results for the usage of countermeasures (CM) to corrupt the CIT's valid...

Reaction times (RTs) are among the oldest measures in psychology, and remain popular in several psychology disciplines. However, they have been largely neglected as a cue for deception, reflecting the sceptic's view that RTs fall under voluntary control and are easily manipulated. From our review of the literature, we draw tentative conclusions on...

Evidence regarding the validity of reaction time (RT) measures in deception research is mixed. One possible reason for this inconsistency is that structurally different RT paradigms have been used. The aim of this study was to experimentally investigate whether structural differences between RT tasks are related to how effective those tasks are for...

Cognitive theories on deception posit that lying requires more cognitive resources than telling the truth. In line with this idea, it has been demonstrated that deceptive responses are typically associated with increased response times and higher error rates compared to truthful responses. Although the cognitive cost of lying has been assumed to be...

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) involves deficits in the reward system. While neuroimaging studies have focused on affective stimulus processing, few investigations have directly addressed deficits in the anticipation of incentives. We examined neural responses during gain and loss anticipation in patients with MDD before and after treatment with a...