Lie construction affects information storage under high memory load condition

Yuqiu Liu,Feiyan Chen,Hongjian He,Haibo Jiang,Chunjie Wang,Peipeng Liang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0181007

Yuqiu Liu, Feiyan Chen + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181007

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Abstract

Previous studies indicate that lying consumes cognitive resources, especially working memory (WM) resources. Considering the dual functions that WM might play in lying: holding the truth-related information and turning the truth into lies, the present study examined the relationship between the information storage and processing in the lie construction. To achieve that goal, a deception task based on the old/new recognition paradigm was designed, which could manipulate two levels of WM load (low-load task using 4 items and high-load task using 6 items) during the deception process. The analyses based on the amplitude of the contralateral delay activity (CDA), a proved index of the number of representations being held in WM, showed that the CDA amplitude was lower in the deception process than that in the truth telling process under the high-load condition. In contrast, under the low-load condition, no CDA difference was found between the deception and truth telling processes. Therefore, we deduced that the lie construction and information storage compete for WM resources; when the available WM resources cannot meet this cognitive demand, the WM resources occupied by the information storage would be consumed by the lie construction.

Highlights

Deception is an intentional attempt to make the receiver believe something that the sender knows is untrue [1,2,3,4]
This study manipulated the memory load during the deception task, and used the contralateral delay activity (CDA) amplitude as an efficient index to examine the relationship between working memory (WM) and deception
This study found that the lie construction decreased the amount of information maintained in WM when participants lied in a high-load task, and it provided a directly evidence that supported the claim that WM participated in the deception process

Summary

Introduction

Deception is an intentional attempt to make the receiver believe something that the sender knows is untrue [1,2,3,4]. Extensive studies have established that when individuals are trying to conceal a truth, they need to decide how to respond, lying or being honest, to the information contained in a communicative interaction. This judgment is made based on the truthrelated information retrieved from memory [4,5,6,7]. If individuals decide to tell the truth, they do not need this construction process, and can give the truthful responses. Researchers have proposed that the deception process demands more attention and memory resources than truth telling [9,10,11,12]

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