| The detection of deception is extremely important for ascertaining facts in the police interrogation, for the veracity of suspects' confessions usually decides the proper solution of a case. From a forensic psycholinguistic approach, the present study first explores the psychological states that motivate the suspects to lie in confessions and the psychological processes the lying suspects experience. These psychological states and processes are believed to be manifested in the lying suspects' confession language. The most frequently mentioned verbal cues of deception are studied and screened out in the present study on the basis of previous studies. An analytical framework based on Vrij's model is established to illustrate the relationship between psychology and verbal cues of deception. It is discovered that depending on luck and being resistant cause suspects to lie in their confessions. While the suspects are lying, they are accompanied by three psychological processes, i.e. emotional, content complexity and behavior control. These psychological states and processes are found displaying in suspects' confession language. The linguistic manifestations are regarded as verbal cues of deception, which are characterized by higher non-immediacy, negativeness, lower complexity and specificity, and irrelevance. A total of eleven specific verbal cues of deception are proposed in the present study, which are categorized into three groups according to the three psychological processes that generate them. The analysis of twenty-two pieces of deceptive confessions shows that five kinds of verbal cues occur with a notable higher frequency than the others in deceptive confessions, the co-occurrence of which well reveals the psychological states and processes of the lying suspects. Therefore, these verbal cues are believed in the present study as red flags of deception and helpful clues for the interrogators to perceive the psychological status of lying suspects.
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