Deceptive Signals Research Articles

Research on deception jamming of chaotic composite short-range detection system based on bispectral analysis and genetic algorithm–back propagation

The chaotic compound short-range detection system is a new type of short-range detection system, which has strong anti-jamming ability. However, for the deception jamming, the characteristics of the complex short-range detection system are very similar to the detection echo, which poses a serious threat to the detection system. In order to analyze and extract the different characteristics between deceptive jamming and target echo signal, so as to realize the anti-deceptive jamming of chaotic compound short-range detection system, this article analyzes and simulates the mathematical model of deceptive jamming and target echo, and analyzes the bispectral characteristics of the simulated echo and jamming signal, and a set of anti-deception jamming feature parameters has been constructed. The identification of deceptive interference is realized by genetic algorithm–back propagation neural network, and the recognition accuracy is high and the real-time performance is good.

Fuzzy signaling game of deception between ant-inspired deceptive robots with interactive learning

In this study the robotic deception phenomenon is raised in the framework of a signaling game which utilizes fuzzy logic and game theory along with inspirations from nature. Accomplishing the fuzzy signaling strategy set for deceptive players serves as a great part of our contribution and on this aim, hierarchical fuzzy inference systems support receiver’s actions and sender’s ant-inspired deceptive signals (track and pheromone). In addition, special deceptive robots and visually-supported experimental environment are also provided. The fuzzy behavior of robots defines the strategy type of players. The final result of deception process depends on this strategy type which leads to proposing a payoff matrix in which each cell of mutual costs is defined with special supporting logic related to our deception game with pursuit–evasion applications. Furthermore, motivated by animal signaling, through applying mixed strategies on deceiver’s honesty level and rival’s trust level, the corresponding learning dynamics are investigated and the conceptual discussion put forward serves as a proof to the smart human-like behavior that occurs between the robots: the interactive learning. Simulation results show that robots are capable of interactive learning within deceptive interaction and finally change their strategies to adopt themselves to new situation occurred due to opponent’s strategy change. Because of repetitive change in strategies as a result of learning, the conditions of a persistent deception without breakdown holds for this game where deceiver can frequently benefit from deception without leaving rival to lose its trust totally. The change in strategy will happen after a short time needed to learn the new situation. In rival’s learning process, this short time, which we call the ignorance time, exactly is the period that deceiver can benefit from deception while its evil intends are still concealed. Moreover, in this study an algorithm is given for the proposed signaling game of deception and an illustrative experiment in the introduced experimental environment demonstrates the process of a successful deception. The paper also gives solution to the proposed game by analyzing mixed Nash equilibrium which turns out to be the interior center fixed point of the learning dynamics.

Deceptive signals and behaviors of a cleptoparasitic beetle show local adaptation to different host bee species

Chemosensory signals play a key role in species recognition and mate location in both invertebrate and vertebrate species. Closely related species often produce similar but distinct signals by varying the ratios or components in pheromone blends to avoid interference in their communication channels and minimize cross-attraction among congeners. However, exploitation of reproductive signals by predators and parasites also may provide strong selective pressure on signal phenotypes. For example, bolas spiders mimic the pheromones of several moth species to attract their prey, and parasitic blister beetle larvae, known as triungulins, cooperatively produce an olfactory signal that mimics the sex pheromone of their female host bees to attract male bees, as the first step in being transported by their hosts to their nests. In both cases, there is strong selection pressure on the host to discriminate real mates from aggressive mimics and, conversely, on the predator, parasite, or parasitoid to track and locally adapt to the evolving signals of its hosts. Here we show local adaptation of a beetle, Meloe franciscanus (Coleoptera: Meloidae), to the pheromone chemistry and mate location behavior of its hosts, two species of solitary bees in the genus Habropoda We report that Mfranciscanus' deceptive signal is locally host-adapted in its chemical composition and ratio of components, with host bees from each allopatric population preferring the deceptive signals of their sympatric parasite population. Furthermore, in different locales, the triungulin aggregations have adapted their perching height to the height at which local male bees typically patrol for females.

Sexual attractiveness and reproductive performance in ageing females of a coccoid insect.

Female age strongly influences reproductive success in various animals. Males are, therefore, expected to show preferential responses to sexual signals released from females of ages suitable for reproduction. Here, however, we report an unexpected and contradictory effect of ageing on sexual attractiveness and reproductive performance in a coccoid insect: the pheromone-based attractiveness of females increased with ageing, though their reproductive performance was in rapid decline. Surprisingly, senescent females continued releasing relatively high amounts of pheromone and maintained their sexual attractiveness, even at ages when they had almost completely lost fertility, with reduced densities of endosymbionts to support their physiology. Our dataset suggests a potential sexual conflict within a pheromone communication system, where females benefit at males' expense through deceptive signals of fertility.

A predator’s response to a prey’s deterrent signal changes with experience

Prey signalling to predators is an attempt to divert or nullify an attack even before it occurs. If these signals are backed up by a potent defence, then the likelihood of the predators learning to avoid them is high. In species that use deceptive signalling, predators could learn to overcome such a display and diminish the efficacy of the display. We studied the effect of experience on the efficacy of tephritid fly displays against jumping spiders. We compared attacks on displaying flies, non-displaying flies, and two other prey species (a facile prey and a prey with a defence). Spiders were more likely to attack displaying flies over time. However, spiders that were familiar with the fly appearance but not display also increased their attack rates. We suggest that spiders attend to both components of the fly display, i.e. motion and appearance, but with motion cues taking priority.

Social structure, opportunistic punishment and the evolution of honest signaling.

Honest signaling is generally taken to be a necessary pre-condition for a stable signaling system, because deceptive signaling at a high enough rate should cause receivers to ignore the signal, which in turn undermines the utility of sending signals. Deception is normally thought to occur because of benefits it has to the deceiver. This raises the question of why signaling systems should exist and persist over time, especially in cases in which the interests of the senders and receivers are not well aligned. Punishment has been seen as a way of imposing costs on deceptive signalers. We investigate the effects of opportunistic—that is, non-altruistic punishment—on the evolution of an honest signaling system. Our model is based on research done on social insects. We model a society of agents, divided into three castes differing in aggressiveness. Under severe punishment deception is indeed asymptotically eliminated. Under somewhat less severe punishment, deception persists and the rates of deception correlate with social structure. We find that social structure robustly mediates the level of deception under regimes of punishment and that this is evident except in the most stringent of punishment regimes.

Deceptive vocal duets and multimodal display in a songbird.

Many group-living animals cooperatively signal to defend resources, but what stops deceptive signalling to competitors about coalition strength? Cooperative-signalling species include mated pairs of birds that sing duets to defend their territory. Individuals of these species sometimes sing 'pseudo-duets' by mimicking their partner's contribution, but it is unknown if these songs are deceptive, or why duets are normally reliable. We studied pseudo-duets in Australian magpie-larks, Grallina cyanoleuca, and tested whether multimodal signalling constrains deception. Magpie-larks give antiphonal duets coordinated with a visual display, with each sex typically choosing a different song type within the duet. Individuals produced pseudo-duets almost exclusively during nesting when partners were apart, but the two song types were used in sequence rather than antiphonally. Strikingly, birds hid and gave no visual displays, implying deceptive suppression of information. Acoustic playbacks showed that pseudo-duets provoked the same response from residents as true duets, regardless of whether they were sequential or antiphonal, and stronger response than that to true duets consisting of a single song type. By contrast, experiments with robot models showed that songs accompanied by movements of two birds prompted stronger responses than songs accompanied by movements of one bird, irrespective of the number of song types or singers. We conclude that magpie-larks used deceptive pseudo-duets when partners were apart, and suppressed the visual display to maintain the subterfuge. We suggest that the visual component of many species' duets provides the most reliable information about the number of signallers and may have evolved to maintain honesty in duet communication.

Toward a formal analysis of deceptive signaling

Deception has long been an important topic in philosophy (see Augustine in Treatises on various subjects, New York, Fathers of the Church, 1952; Kant in Practical philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996; Chisholm and Feehan in J Philos 74: 143–159, 1977; Mahon in Int J Appl Philos 21: 181–194, 2007; Carson in Lying and deception, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010). However, the traditional analysis of the concept, which requires that a deceiver intentionally cause her victim to have a false belief, rules out the possibility of much deception in the animal kingdom. Cognitively unsophisticated species, such as fireflies and butterflies, have simply evolved to mislead potential predators and/or prey. To capture such cases of “functional deception,” several researchers (e.g., Sober, From a biological point of view, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994; Hauser in: Whiten, Byrne (eds) Machiavellian intelligence II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 112–143, 1997; Searcy and Nowicki, The evolution of animal communication, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005; Skyrms, Signals, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010) have endorsed the broader view that deception only requires that a deceiver benefit from sending a misleading signal. Moreover, in order to facilitate game-theoretic study of deception in the context of Lewisian sender-receiver games, Brian Skyrms has proposed an influential formal analysis of this view. Such formal analyses have the potential to enhance our philosophical understanding of deception in humans as well as animals. However, as we argue in this paper, Skyrms’s analysis, as well as two recently proposed alternative analyses (viz., Godfrey-Smith in Review of signals: evolution, learning, and information by Brian Skyrms, Mind, 120: 1288–1297, 2001; McWhirter in Brit J Philos Sci 67: 757–780, 2016), are seriously flawed and can lead us to draw unwarranted conclusions about deception.

Wild Voices: Mimicry, Reversal, Metaphor, and the Emergence of Language

Why is it that, out of 220 primate species, we are the only one that talks? The relative inflexibility of primate vocal signaling reflects audience pressure for reliability. Where interests conflict, listeners’ resistance to being deceived drives signalers to limit their vocal repertoire to signals that cannot be faked. This constraint was lifted in the human case, we argue, because the original victims of our species’ first deceptive vocalizations were nonhuman animals. When our ancestors were vulnerable hominins equipped with limited weaponry, they kept predators away by increasing the range and diversity of their vocal calls. This led to choral singing, primarily by females, and deceptive mimicry of animal calls, primarily by scavenging and hunting males. A critical feature of our model is the core principle of reversal, whereby deceptive signals aimed originally by a coalition against an external target are subsequently redeployed for honest communicative purposes within the group. We argue that this ...

A supporting method to detect manipulated zones in digitally edited audio files

The courts request the forensic audio laboratory to determine whether the digital audio files are original or modified, where the altered files have been modified, and which parts can be used as evidence. It is important to identify manipulation zones in audio files that contain speech as well as to determine the authenticity of the audio file. For this reason, when we examine the theory and rules of digitizing or digital recording, it has been found that inevitable manipulation traces must be found at the manipulation points, but these traces can be removed or reduced by certain software although some manipulations can be re-revealed. In this paper, a supporting method that uncovers the wide band oscillations signals known as the Gibbs effect caused by tape tampering but may have been obscured by software means is given, and it can distinguish such manipulations from other deceptive but benign transient signals. The procedure is applied on digital files in a computer. Lower frequencies are de-emphasized compared to higher frequencies in a special way by software so that manipulation points are easier to detect. Examples are presented. The aim is to reduce forensic analyst investigation time and fatigue. It has been used as a supporting method in our institution since 1998.

Honest signals to maintain a long‐lasting relationship: floral colour change prevents plant‐level avoidance by experienced pollinators

Summary Honest signals prevail when those signals manipulate receivers to benefit the senders more than deceptive signals do. Floral colour change (FCC), reported in hundreds of species, is a well‐known example of honest signalling in plant–pollinator interactions. It occurs in fully turgid flowers, and usually correlates with a cessation of reward production in individual flowers. This trait has been considered a plant strategy that enhances distant pollinator attraction by extended displays, while minimizing visits to non‐reproductive flowers by honest colour signals. Here, we propose an additional, overlooked benefit of FCC, which emerges when we consider the spatial learning ability of pollinators to avoid unprofitable plants. If a plant retains rewardless flowers without FCC, it is difficult for pollinators to visually locate the rewarding flowers. Although the enhanced display initially attracts more pollinators, its low profitability for foraging may cause plant‐level avoidance by them. The avoidance resulting from rewardless flower retention may be prevented by FCC because it helps pollinators to find rewarding flowers. To test this hypothesis, we observed the behavioural changes of bumblebees foraging in an array of artificial plants. We found that rewardless flowers without FCC could initially attract bees by increasing the plant's display size, but their lack of reward resulted in plant‐level avoidance by those bees with spatial memories. The FCC in rewardless flowers, in contrast, encouraged bees to return by helping them to find rewards on plants. Consequently, honest plants with FCC received more visits than those dishonest plants that did not display colour change. Floral colour change thus can prevent plant‐level avoidance by pollinators that use spatial memory when choosing plants. The spatial learning ability of pollinators may, therefore, be one of the keys to understanding why both colour‐changing and non‐colour‐changing plant species occur among angiosperms. A lay summary is available for this article.

Luring

Bulbert and Wignall introduce the ways animals lure their prey.

Floral morphology and pollination inGastrodia elata, a mycoheterotrophic orchid

AbstractPollination biology inGastrodia elatawas investigated onRebunIsland,Japan. The flowers have an urceolate perianth chamber whose opening is constricted by the column and labellum. This structure plays a crucial role in the selection of small‐bodied bees from flower visitors of various body sizes. In addition, the furrow on the ventral side of the column possibly contributes to the admission of sweat bee pollinators, whose thoracic widths match the width of the furrow. Sweat bees receive the pollinarium on their thorax while escaping head first from the chamber. No pollinator rewards, such as previously reported harvestable spongy tissue, are likely to be produced by the orchid. The flowers, however, have a glossy area reminiscent of nectar secreted into the chamber that likely acts as a deceptive signal for pollinators. Fruit‐set ratios were found to vary spatiotemporally; the values were higher under bright light conditions, probably reflecting the presence of sweat bees for sunny places.

Discrimination of active false targets in multistatic radar using spatial scattering properties

The anti-jamming methods available in multistatic radar are mostly based on data fusion processing and therefore do not fully explore its anti-jamming ability. In the view of multistatic radar, the echoes of real targets received by the widely separated receivers would be independent from each other due to the independence of target radar cross sections in different scattering directions. However, the deception jamming received by the same receivers would be highly correlated since the jamming signals transmitted to different directions are identical. Therefore, real targets would differ from false targets in the spatial scattering property in multistatic radar. By exploiting this phenomenon, a new signal fusion-based method for discriminating active false targets from desired real targets is proposed in this study based on Neyman–Pearson lemma. In this method, false targets are identified by correlation test between the complex envelopes of arbitrary two targets in different receivers. The new method can discriminate false targets generated by deception signals with arbitrary modulation. The closed-form expression for the rejection probability of false targets is derived. Both theoretical analysis and simulations verify the feasibility of the proposed method.

Ant-Inspired Fuzzily Deceptive Robots

Deception plays a leading role in many intelligent systems. In order to model the uncertainties and make artificial deception near the one existing in the real world, fuzzy theory seems a reasonable tool. This study is the pioneering one to incorporate fuzzy logic concepts into the phenomenon of deceptive robotics. In this study, a hide-and-seek process is considered in a maze imaginable in any form between two robots, one of which is basically trying to deceive the other. The fuzzy definition of behavioral strategies based on past experience for both the deceiver and the competitor robot makes them act like human beings in conflict with each other. Combining the fuzzy reasoning with ant-inspired metaheuristics is another aspect of novelty in this study: Fulfilling the deception, the deceiver is supposed to produce two deceptive signals (track and pheromone) using a fuzzy inference system in order to arrange the environment as desired. After the deceiver decides where to go, the robot under deception is to decide which path to choose based on a utility function calculated within a hierarchical fuzzy inference system whose direct inputs are the value of deception signals and also his behavioral strategy. Since the ant-inspired deception signal varies by passing time, not always will everything look like as the deceiver designs. In addition, in order to test the experimental results along with the simulations, special robots with demanded features are designed and manufactured who benefit from a vision-based feedback to move in a real maze. The results of a series of extensive experiments give an evidence of the effectiveness of the proposed deception algorithm in terms of a sufficiently high deception success percentage. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that even the rare cases of deception failure speak for the human reasoning abilities of the robots, which is another support to effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Moreover, due to the nature of the problem, here, we will face a noncooperative game with incomplete information between rational players in which the belief of the robot under deception is manipulated by the deceiver through the arrangement of the environment by deception signals.

Three‐dimensional deceptive scene generation against single‐pass InSAR based on coherent transponders

Single-pass interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) has strong anti-jamming capacity, and can eliminate the arbitrary jamming generated by single stationary transponder via dual-channel cancellation. In this study, a novel three-dimensional (3D) deceptive scene generation method against single-pass InSAR based on two coherent transponders is proposed. The deceptive signal of the proposed method at arbitrary location is composed by two complex components generated by the transponders. The complex scattering coefficient template modulated in each transponder is determined according to the relation between the deceptive interferometric phase template and the modulated complex scattering coefficient ratio of the two transponders. The 3D deceptive scene against single-pass InSAR is realised by generating jamming signal in each transponder via the fast deceptive jamming techniques against SAR. Simulation results of false point targets and 3D deceptive scene demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.

Deception as Competence: The Effect of Occupation on Ethical Judgment and Behavior

Existing research assumes that deception undermines a person’s trustworthiness and career prospects. Yet, in some occupations, deception persists, and deceptive individuals seem to advance. The current research unpacks this puzzle by exploring how deception is perceived and enacted across occupations. Integrating research on trust, negotiations, and occupational stereotypes, we predict that deception signals salesmanship, which signals competence and competence-based trustworthiness in occupations thought to rely on salesmanship. As a result, individuals aspiring to join high-salesmanship occupations actually engage in elevated levels of deception. Four multi-method, multi-sample studies demonstrate that occupations systematically vary in perceived salesmanship , that deception is seen as more competent and worthy of competence-based trust in high- (e.g., advertising, investment banking) than low- salesmanship occupations (e.g., accounting, non-profit), and that deception thus emerges more frequently in high-salesmanship occupations. In addition to suggesting interventions that could curb deception, these results extend theory in several ways, particularly by documenting occupational variation in perceptions of trust and deception.

Female sea lamprey shift orientation toward a conspecific chemical cue to escape a sensory trap

The sensory trap model of signal evolution hypothesizes that signalers adapt to exploit a cue used by the receiver in another context. Although exploitation of receiver biases can result in conflict between the sexes, deceptive signaling systems that are mutually beneficial drive the evolution of stable communication systems. However, female responses in the nonsexual and sexual contexts may become uncoupled if costs are associated with exhibiting a similar response to a trait in both contexts. Male sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) signal with a mating pheromone, 3-keto petromyzonol sulfate (3kPZS), which may be a match to a juvenile cue used by females during migration. Upstream movement of migratory lampreys is partially guided by 3kPZS, but females only move toward 3kPZS with proximal accuracy during spawning. Here, we use in-stream behavioral assays paired with gonad histology to document the transition of female preference for juvenile- and male-released 3kPZS that coincides with the functional shift of 3kPZS as a migratory cue to a mating pheromone. Females became increasingly biased toward the source of synthesized 3kPZS as their maturation progressed into the reproductive phase, at which point, a preference for juvenile odor (also containing 3kPZS naturally) ceased to exist. Uncoupling of female responses during migration and spawning makes the 3kPZS communication system a reliable means of synchronizing mate search. The present study offers a rare example of a transition in female responses to a chemical cue between nonsexual and sexual contexts, provides insights into the origins of stable communication signaling systems.

Preys’ exploitation of predators’ fear: when the caterpillar plays the Gruffalo

Alike the little mouse of the Gruffalo's tale, many harmless preys use intimidating deceptive signals as anti-predator strategies. For example, several caterpillars display eyespots and face-like colour patterns that are thought to mimic the face of snakes as deterrents to insectivorous birds. We develop a theoretical model to investigate the hypothesis that these defensive strategies exploit adaptive cognitive biases of birds, which make them much more likely to confound caterpillars with snakes than vice versa. By focusing on the information-processing mechanisms of decision-making, the model assumes that, during prey assessment, the bird accumulates noisy evidence supporting either the snake-escape or the caterpillar-attack motor responses, which compete against each other for execution. Competition terminates when the evidence for either one of the responses reaches a critical threshold. This model predicts a strong asymmetry and a strong negative correlation between the prey- and the predator-decision thresholds, which increase with the increasing risk of snake predation and assessment uncertainty. The threshold asymmetry causes an asymmetric distribution of false-negative and false-positive errors in the snake-caterpillar decision plane, which makes birds much more likely to be deceived by the intimidating signals of snake-mimicking caterpillars than by the alluring signals of caterpillar-mimicking snakes.

Strategic risk in supply chain contract design

Supply chains facing asymmetric information can either operate in a cooperative mode with information and benefit sharing or can choose a non-cooperative form of interaction and align their incentives via screening contracts. In the cooperative mode, supply chain efficiency can be achieved, but high levels of trust and trustworthiness are required. In the non-cooperative mode, the contract mechanism guarantees a second best supply chain performance, but only if all parties choose their equilibrium strategies without trembles. Experimental evidence, however, shows that both operating modes often fail due to strategic risk. Cooperation is disrupted by deceptive signals and the lack of trust, whereas non-cooperative strategies suffer from persistent out-of-equilibrium behavior. We present two means to reduce strategic risk. First, a punishment mechanism leads to a better matching of trust and trustworthiness and supports the cooperative operating mode. Second, an enforcement of self-selection supports the non-cooperative equilibrium by increasing the attractiveness of screening contracts. We find that supply chain performance can benefit from reduced strategic risk in either operating mode.