Abstract
The paper presents research aimed at analysing the frequency of verbal and vocal signs in a situation of false and true statements, by introducing a secondary task. The research involved 100 students (47 men and 53 women) of the master's studies of criminal investigation at the University of Criminal Investigation and Police Studies, aged 23-44. Students had the task, based on the observation of twenty selected videos (10 true statements and 10 false statements), to mark the frequency of each individual verbal and vocal sign, on a previously generated and prepared list. The results show that there is a statistically significant difference in terms of the frequency of all verbal and vocal signs in a false or true statement: response latency, speech hesitation, speech errors, speech rate, number of spoken words in the utterance, and length of utterance. Response latency, speech hesitation, and speech errors have higher median values in false utterances than in true ones, while speech rate, number of words spoken, and length of utterance show higher median values in true than false utterances.
Highlights
The interrogation or police questioning process, regardless of whether victims, witnesses or suspects are questioned, is conducted in order to gather information and assess its accuracy
The results show that there is a statistically significant difference in terms of the frequency of all verbal and vocal signs in a false or true statement: response latency, speech hesitation, speech errors, speech rate, number of spoken words in the utterance, and length of utterance
Research shows that in a situation where a suspect gives a false statement, cognitive load leads to more frequent occurrence of some vocal signs, such as: longer pauses in speech (Clark & Fox Tree, 2002; DePaulo et al, 2003; Vrij & Mann, 2001), hesitation in speech (Vrij et al, 2001a), longer periods of latency (Vrij et al, 2001b; Vrij et al, 2001c) and more frequent speech errors (Anolli et al, 2003; Vrij & Mann, 2001)
Summary
The interrogation or police questioning process, regardless of whether victims, witnesses or suspects are questioned, is conducted in order to gather information and assess its accuracy. The research conducted in Serbia (Baić & Batić, 2013) was based on the concept of Vrij, Fisher, Mann and Leal (2008) and included the classical methodology of divided-attention This concept is based on the assumption that the introduction of a secondary task will be more cognitively demanding in a situation where participants lie than in a situation where they tell the truth, as a result of which different patterns of behaviour will appear in false and true statements. Since the results of previous research (Baić & Batić, 2013) showed the justification of further research, the basic problem of this research can be expressed by the following question: What is the frequency of verbal and vocal signs in a situation of false and true statement, by applying the described methodology and introducing a secondary task? Since the results of previous research (Baić & Batić, 2013) showed the justification of further research, the basic problem of this research can be expressed by the following question: What is the frequency of verbal and vocal signs in a situation of false and true statement, by applying the described methodology and introducing a secondary task? Based on the results of previous research, it can be expected that the secondary task will limit the cognitive resources of the participants, due to which significant differences in the frequency of verbal and vocal signs will appear in false and true statements
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