Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl
the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects,
then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and
observations.
Today's article talks about a rather important skill for everyone, but especially people with disabilities: lie detection. Some people seem better at this skill than others, sometimes to the point of being uncannily good at it. But others, autistic people especially, lack this skill altogether as part a broader-spectrum set of social deficits. This is problematic, because the disabled population is many times more likely to be taken advantage of and abused than anyone else.
To make matters worse, the "classic tells" of a liar, that is, avoiding eye contact, fidgeting, and overcomplicated stories... don't apply to more practiced liars. So the things media trains us to look for can steer us wrong, or even give us false positives. Adding in visual processing difficulties, like I have, just makes this picture even worse.
Enter VERITAS (Veracity Education and Reactance Instruction through Technology and Applied Skills), a video game designed to teach people how to detect lies. Developed by Professor Norah Dunbar at UC Santa Barbara, this software has been tested repeatedly on college students and law enforcement officers. The college students' accuracy at lie detection tends to start at about 56% (so, just slightly better than flipping a coin), but after an hour playing this video game, their accuracy is up to 68%. That may not seem like a huge amount, but it is statistically significant, and it's possible that with further practice on the game, the number might improve further. Law enforcement saw similar gains, though their starting accuracy was at 62% and it improved, on average, to 78%. That's pretty good for a single hour playing a video game.
I was pleased to see the professor mention that there is no single thing that will tell you if the person's lying, and that it varies on the person. A lot of people put great stock into eye contact, but if an autistic person can't or won't look at you, that doesn't mean they're lying to you or ignoring you. So this stereotype often makes lots of trouble for autistic people.
The article itself has some behaviors to look for, if you want to sharpen your own lie-detection skills. Personally, I'd just like a copy of this video game.
Today's article talks about a rather important skill for everyone, but especially people with disabilities: lie detection. Some people seem better at this skill than others, sometimes to the point of being uncannily good at it. But others, autistic people especially, lack this skill altogether as part a broader-spectrum set of social deficits. This is problematic, because the disabled population is many times more likely to be taken advantage of and abused than anyone else.
To make matters worse, the "classic tells" of a liar, that is, avoiding eye contact, fidgeting, and overcomplicated stories... don't apply to more practiced liars. So the things media trains us to look for can steer us wrong, or even give us false positives. Adding in visual processing difficulties, like I have, just makes this picture even worse.
Enter VERITAS (Veracity Education and Reactance Instruction through Technology and Applied Skills), a video game designed to teach people how to detect lies. Developed by Professor Norah Dunbar at UC Santa Barbara, this software has been tested repeatedly on college students and law enforcement officers. The college students' accuracy at lie detection tends to start at about 56% (so, just slightly better than flipping a coin), but after an hour playing this video game, their accuracy is up to 68%. That may not seem like a huge amount, but it is statistically significant, and it's possible that with further practice on the game, the number might improve further. Law enforcement saw similar gains, though their starting accuracy was at 62% and it improved, on average, to 78%. That's pretty good for a single hour playing a video game.
I was pleased to see the professor mention that there is no single thing that will tell you if the person's lying, and that it varies on the person. A lot of people put great stock into eye contact, but if an autistic person can't or won't look at you, that doesn't mean they're lying to you or ignoring you. So this stereotype often makes lots of trouble for autistic people.
The article itself has some behaviors to look for, if you want to sharpen your own lie-detection skills. Personally, I'd just like a copy of this video game.
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