Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:44:22.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Speech cues to deception in bilinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2020

Margarethe McDonald*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Elizabeth Mormer
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Margarita Kaushanskaya
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Acoustic cues to deception on a picture-naming task were analyzed in three groups of English speakers: monolinguals, bilinguals with English as their first language, and bilinguals with English as a second language. Results revealed that all participants had longer reaction times when generating falsehoods than when producing truths, and that the effect was more robust for English as a second language bilinguals than for the other two groups. Articulation rate was higher for all groups when producing lies. Mean fundamental frequency and intensity cues were not reliable cues to deception, but there was lower variance in both of these parameters when generating false versus true labels for all participants. Results suggest that naming latency was the only cue to deception that differed by language background. These findings broadly support the cognitive-load theory of deception, suggesting that a combination of producing deceptive speech and using a second language puts an extra load on the speaker.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akehurst, L., Arnhold, A., Figueiredo, I., Turtle, S., & Leach, A. M. (2018). Investigating deception in second language speakers: Interviewee and assessor perspectives. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 23, 230251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anolli, L., & Ciceri, R. (1997). The voice of deception: Vocal strategies of naive and able liars. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 21, 259284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, D., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 255278.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, E., D’Amico, S., Jacobsen, T., Székely, A., Andonova, E., Devescovi, A., … Tzeng, O. (2003). Timed picture naming in seven languages. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 344380.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., Klein, R., & Viswanathan, M. (2004). Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon task. Psychology and Aging, 19, 290.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bialystok, E., & Shapero, D. (2005). Ambiguous benefits: The effect of bilingualism on reversing ambiguous figures. Developmental Science, 8, 595604.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bialystok, E., & Viswanathan, M. (2009). Components of executive control with advantages for bilingual children in two cultures. Cognition, 112, 494500.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boersma, P. (1993). Accurate short-term analysis of the fundamental frequency and the harmonics-to-noise ratio of a sampled sound. In Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences (Vol. 17, No. 1193, pp. 97–110). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2017). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 6.0.29. Retrieved May 24, 2017, from http://www.praat.org/ Google Scholar
Brunken, R., Plass, J. L., & Leutner, D. (2003). Direct measurement of cognitive load in multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist, 38, 5361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldwell-Harris, C. L. (2015). Emotionality differences between a native and foreign language: Implications for everyday life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 214219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldwell-Harris, C. L., & Ayçiçeği-Dinn, A. (2009). Emotion and lying in a non-native language. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 71, 193204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cheng, K. H. W., & Broadhurst, R. (2005). The detection of deception: The effects of first and second language on lie detection ability. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 12, 107118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costa, A., Hernández, M., Costa-Faidella, J., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2009). On the bilingual advantage in conflict processing: Now you see it, now you don’t. Cognition, 113, 135149.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Da Silva, C. S., & Leach, A. M. (2013). Detecting deception in second-language speakers. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 18, 115127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DePaulo, B. M., Lindsay, J. J., Malone, B. E., Muhlenbruck, L., Charlton, K., & Cooper, H. (2003). Cues to deception. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DePaulo, B. M., Rosenthal, R., Rosenkrantz, J., & Green, C. R. (1982). Actual and perceived cues to deception: A closer look at speech. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 3, 291312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewaele, J. M. (2008). The emotional weight of I love you in multilinguals’ languages. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 17531780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duñabeitia, J. A., & Costa, A. (2015). Lying in a native and foreign language. Psychonomic Bulletin Review, 22, 11241129.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, D. M. (2007). PPVT-4: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Minneapolis, MN: Pearson Assessments.Google Scholar
Dunn, L. M., Padilla, E. R., Lugo, D. E., & Dunn, L. M. (1986). TVIP: Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody: Adaptacion Hispanoamericana = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test: Hispanic-American adaptation. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Eilola, T. M., Havelka, J., & Sharma, D. (2007). Emotional activation in the first and second language. Cognition and Emotion, 21, 10641076.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, P. (2009). Telling lies: Clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Ekman, P., O’Sullivan, M., Friesen, W. V., & Scherer, K. R. (1991). Invited article: Face, voice, and body in detecting deceit. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 15, 125135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, E., & Leach, A. M. (2016). You must be lying because I don’t understand you: Language proficiency and lie detection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 22, 488.Google ScholarPubMed
Evans, J. R., & Michael, S. W. (2014). Detecting deception in non-native English speakers. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28, 226237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. R., Michael, S. W., Meissner, C. A., & Brandon, S. E. (2013). Validating a new assessment method for deception detection: Introducing a psychologically based credibility assessment tool. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2, 3341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. R., Pimentel, P. S., Pena, M. M., & Michael, S. W. (2017). The ability to detect false statements as a function of the type of statement and the language proficiency of the statement provider. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 23, 290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeley, T. H., & Deturck, M. A. (1998). The behavioral correlates of sanctioned and unsanctioned deceptive communication. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 22, 189204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gollan, T. H., Montoya, R. I., Fennema-Notestine, C., & Morris, S. K. (2005). Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification. Memory & Cognition, 33, 12201234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, J. O., O’Hair, H., Cody, M. J., & Yen, C. (1985). Planning and control of behavior during deception. Human Communication Research, 11, 335364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanulová, J., Davidson, D. J., & Indefrey, P. (2011). Where does the delay in L2 picture naming come from? Psycholinguistic and neurocognitive evidence on second language word production. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26, 902934.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, C. L., Ayçíçeğí, A., & Gleason, J. B. (2003). Taboo words and reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first language than in a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 561579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, A., Hwalek, M., Raney, D., & Fritz, J. (1978). Cues to deception in an interview situation. Social Psychology, 41, 156161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwitz, E. K., Horwitz, M. B., & Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. Modern Language Journal, 70, 125132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, A., & Kaufman, N. (2004). Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (2nd ed.). Bloomington, MN: Pearson.Google Scholar
Kirchhübel, C., & Howard, D. M. (2013). Detecting suspicious behaviour using speech: Acoustic correlates of deceptive speech—An exploratory investigation. Applied Ergonomics, 44, 694702.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirchhübel, C., Stedmon, A. W., & Howard, D. M. (2013). Analyzing deceptive speech. In D. Harris (Eds.), Engineering psychology and cognitive egonomics: Understanding human cognition. EPCE 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 8019). Heidelberg: Springer.Google Scholar
Kreyßig, N., & Krautz, A. E. (2019). Lying and perception of lies by bilingual speakers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 40, 13131329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leach, A. M., & Da Silva, C. S. (2013). Language proficiency and police officers’ lie detection performance. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 28, 4853.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leach, A. M., Snellings, R. L., & Gazaille, M. (2017). Observers’ language proficiencies and the detection of non-native speakers’ deception. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 31, 247257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lev-Ari, S., & Keysar, B. (2010). Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 10931096.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lively, S. E., Pisoni, D. B., Van Summers, W., & Bernacki, R. H. (1993). Effects of cognitive workload on speech production: Acoustic analyses and perceptual consequences. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 93, 29622973.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luke, T. J. (2019). Lessons from Pinocchio: Cues to deception may be highly exaggerated. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14, 646671.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maldonado, T. (2016). The role of working memory capacity and cognitive load in producing and detecting deception. Masters thesis, Montana State University-Bozeman.Google Scholar
Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H. K., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 940967.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Michael, E. B., & Gollan, T. H. (2005). Being and becoming bilingual. In Kroll, J. F., & de Groot, A. M. B. (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches (pp. 389407). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Motley, M. T. (1974). Acoustic correlates of lies. Western Journal of Communication, 38, 8187.Google Scholar
Müller, C., Großmann-Hutter, B., Jameson, A., Rummer, R., & Wittig, F. (2001). Recognizing time pressure and cognitive load on the basis of speech: An experimental study. In Bauer, M., Gmytrasiewicz, P. J., & Vassileva, J. (Eds.), User Modeling 2001. UM 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 2109). Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Nolan, F. (2003). Intonational equivalence: An experimental evaluation of pitch scales.] Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Vol. 39), Barcelona, Spain, August 2003.Google Scholar
Paap, K. R., & Greenberg, Z. I. (2013). There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing. Cognitive Psychology, 66, 232258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prior, A., & MacWhinney, B. (2010). A bilingual advantage in task switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 253262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Core Team. (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer Software]. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from https://www.R-project.org/ Google Scholar
Revelle, W. (2018). psych: Procedures for Personality and Psychological Research [Computer Software]. Retrieved from https://personality-project.org/r/psych-manual.pdf Google Scholar
Rockwell, P., Buller, D. B., & Burgoon, J. K. (1997a). Measurement of deceptive voices: Comparing acoustic and perceptual data. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18, 471484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rockwell, P., Buller, D. B., & Burgoon, J. K. (1997b). The voice of deceit: Refining and expanding vocal cues to deception. Communication Research Reports, 14, 451459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherer, K. R., Feldstein, S., Bond, R. N., & Rosenthal, R. (1985). Vocal cues to deception: A comparative channel approach. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 14, 409425.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scherer, K. R., & Oshinsky, J. S. (1977). Cue utilization in emotion attribution from auditory stimuli. Motivation and Emotion, 1, 331346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snodgrass, J. G., & Vanderwart, M. (1980). A standardized set of 260 pictures: Norms for name agreement, familiarity and visual complexity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6, 174215.Google ScholarPubMed
Streeter, L. A., Krauss, R. M., Geller, V., Olson, C., & Apple, W. (1977). Pitch changes during attempted deception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 345350.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tolkmitt, F. J., & Scherer, K. R. (1986). Effect of experimentally induced stress on vocal parameters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 12, 302313.Google ScholarPubMed
Vrij, A., Edward, K., & Bull, R. (2001). Stereotypical verbal and nonverbal responses while deceiving others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 899909.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vrij, A., Fisher, R., Mann, S., & Leal, S. (2008). A cognitive load approach to lie detection. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 5, 3943.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walczyk, J. J., Roper, K. S., Seemann, E., & Humphrey, A. M. (2003). Cognitive mechanisms underlying lying to questions: Response time as a cue to deception. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 755774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walczyk, J. J., Schwartz, J. P., Clifton, R., Adams, B., Wei, M. I. N., & Zha, P. (2005). Lying person-to-person about life events: A cognitive framework for lie detection. Personnel Psychology, 58, 141170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westfall, J. (2015). PANGEA: Power analysis for general ANOVA designs. Unpublished manuscript. Available at http://jakewestfall.org/publications/pangea.pdf Google Scholar
Zuckerman, M., DePaulo, B. M., & Rosenthal, R. (1981). Verbal and nonverbal communication of deception. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 14, pp. 1–59). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar