ABSTRACT
TRUTH, LIES and VIDEOCONFERENCING:
DETECTING DECEPTION in VIDEO-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION
Dan Horn, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan
With the advent of communication technologies such as videoconferencing,
many traditionally face-to-face interactions are being conducted in
technologically mediated contexts. In addition to business and
organizational communications, television news broadcasts have begun
utilizing videophones to broadcast from remote locations. Despite
increases in bandwidth and computational power, most videoconferencing
equipment still delivers a sub-optimal quality signal. Artifacts caused by
video compression and other technological constraints lead to the
distortion of subtle communicative cues. These cues, while not central
for understanding, play an important role in such communicative tasks as
turn-taking, the expression of emotion, and the detection of deception.
My research explores the effects of various types of video degradation on
lie detection. This work includes assessing the visibility of behavioral
cues that are traditionally used in making judgments of deception, and
measuring the performance of judges attempting to discriminate truthful
from deceptive messages. I have found that different behavioral cues
appear to be affected independently by spatial and temporal distortion, and
that lie detection performance is affected in a rather surprising fashion
by different types of video degradation. I will present these findings as
well as some current and future directions.
Maintained by rbennett@cs.ucl.ac.uk