The Influence From Dual Task On Deception At The Educational Background

The present study used a dual task paradigm to investigate the relationship between memory load and individuals’ success in deception. More specifically, we created a mock job interview situation where participants were asked to fake their educational experiences in order to meet the stated requirements in the job description. We interviewed participants twice with exactly the same questions. Half of the questions asked participants information about their non-existent education experience whereas the control questions asked participants about their actual educational experience. To examine the influence of working memory load on deception, we randomly assigned participants to one of the four conditions. In the Double-Double Condition, we required participants to answer interview questions in the first and second interview while performing an irrelevant but working memory-demanding cognitive task. In the Double-Single Condition, participants were only asked to perform the cognitive task while being questioned in the first interview but not in the second interview. In the Single-Double Condition, participants only performed the cognitive task during the second interview but not the first interview. In the Single-Single Condition, participants were questioned without performing the cognitive task in both interviews. This research included two studies using the same method to detect lie. In the first study, by analyzing the consistency scores of the subjects, we found that dual task paradigm could be a simple and effective method to detect lie. But we also found this study was not so perfect, so we carried out the second study. In the second study, we changed the concurrent task and some questions about the educational experience. In this study, we got not only the consistency scores but also the scores of the concurrent task. By analyzing these scores, we got the conclusions as follows:1In all four conditions, subjects’consistency scores for the true experience were higher than the false experience. That was to say, using the consistency scores could detect lie.2The consistency scores in the Single-Single condition for the true experience were much higher than the other three conditions. In other words, concurrent task had influence on the long term memory’s retrieval.3In the Double-Double and Double-Single conditions, the consistency scores for the false experience were much higher than the other two conditions. It suggested that the concurrent task’s influence on the short term memory’s encoding was much more significant than on the recalling.4The subjects’hands vibrating frequency in the concurrent task could be taken as an indicator of lying. Because by means of it, we could see how much cognitive resource does the brain assign to the concurrent task.5In both the encoding stage and recalling stage of the false experience, the brain assigned the same cognitive resource to the concurrent task. It means that the short term memory’s encoding and recalling need the same cognitive resource.6The harder the concurrent task was, the more cognitive resource it needed, and the more influence it had on the memory. So harder concurrent task could be more helpful in the lie detecting.