Abstract
Previous studies have reported that the concealed information test (CIT) is a reliable and powerful method for detecting information. However, the external validity of the CIT studies has not been fully proven. In particular, few studies have examined the effects of emotional arousal at memory encoding on physiological responses in the CIT. The present study investigated the influence on the CIT of the magnitude of emotional arousal at memory encoding of a mock crime, using the P300 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP). In accord with the assumptions of excitation-transfer theory, we presented emotionally arousing pictures before a mock crime. Participants were randomly assigned to either a high emotional arousal group (n = 10) or a low emotional arousal group (n = 11), viewing pictures expected to arouse emotion at a high or low level, respectively. Subsequently, all participants enacted the same mock crime, in which they were instructed to stab a pillow with a sharp-edged tool (e.g., a kitchen knife or ice pick) as if harassing a mannequin lying on a bed. After the antecedent emotional experience, the P300-based CIT was conducted. Participants in the high arousal group showed significantly greater P300 amplitudes in response to a probe stimulus compared with the low arousal group. No differences were found between the groups in response to irrelevant stimuli. These results support the notion that emotional arousal influences the P300 in the CIT paradigm.
Highlights
The concealed information test (CIT) is a method of detecting information strongly related to an examinee’s memory (Verschuere et al, 2011a)
We manipulated the magnitude of emotional arousal before a mock crime, and examined the effects of this manipulation on the CIT using P300 amplitudes
Consistent with our hypothesis, P300 amplitudes in response to the probe stimulus were larger in the High Arousal group compared with the Low Arousal group, while amplitudes in response to the irrelevant stimuli were not different between groups
Summary
The concealed information test (CIT) is a method of detecting information strongly related to an examinee’s memory (Verschuere et al, 2011a). The CIT has been established as a reliable and powerful method for detecting information in numerous studies (for reviews, see Ben-Shakhar, 2012; Meijer et al, 2014). The CIT has been applied in the practical forensic field in several countries, including Japan (Nakayama, 2002; Osugi, 2011; Ogawa et al, 2015; Zaitsu, 2016), the external validity of the CIT studies has been an open question among researchers because it is difficult to obtain useful field data. Some studies have compared the results of laboratory experiments with those of field examinations (Osugi, 2010, 2018; Zaitsu, 2016), but the external validity of the CIT studies has not yet been established. Emotional arousal is one of potential factors that seems to differ between laboratory experiments and field situations. Emotional arousal during retrieval in the CIT has been investigated
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