George

Are you telling me you don't have to be experienced to be an interviewer/interrogator?  By the way, you failed to provide your experience.  Or did you fail to provide it?  Maybe if you'd have passed your polygraph back whenever, you'd have some experience under your belt.  Couldn't resist taking that little shot.

Saidme,

I see... In order to be able to understand how a polygrapher can so condition a subject who understands the function of the "control" questions such that the subject will respond differentially to "control" versus relevant questions, it is not enough to "understand the dynamics involved in interviews and interrogations and with human behavior," one must also be an experienced criminal interrogator and be a polygraph examiner.

Utter nonsense and shameless excusemaking, Saidme. (I also note that the conditions you've set forth would tend to exclude polygraphers from intelligence agencies such as the CIA, NSA, and DIA.)

George

How many criminal interviews/interrogations have you conducted?  How many criminal interviews/interrogations have you personnally observed?  If the answer is none than you don't really understand the dynamics involved in interviews/interrogations and human behavior.  Maybe I should have been more specific and put the word "criminal" in that sentence.  Sorry if I was vague.  If you have substantive experience in these areas, I stand corrected.

Regarding your questions:  "What can a polygraph examiner do to ensure differential responding to control versus relevant questions by a subject who understands the function of the "control" questions? And how can the examiner know that his/her conditioning of the subject has worked?"

Regardless of what I respond with you will somehow twist and mold and reform and blah, blah, blah until it fits your little view of the world.  Therefore I won't respond.  That in and of itself should give you ample ammo to tell everyone how we (examiner's) can't answer your silly questions.   

Shouldn't you be in bed.

Saidme,

You write:

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I am indeed familiar with the dynamics involved in interviews and interrogations and with human behavior. While I'm not a polygraph examiner, why not try me? What can a polygraph examiner do to ensure differential responding to control versus relevant questions by a subject who understands the function of the "control" questions? And how can the examiner know that his/her conditioning of the subject has worked?

George

To really understand it George you would need to understand the dynamics involved in interviews/interrogtions, human behavior, and be a polygraph examiner yourself.  With regards to your question:  DI suspects will take care of themself.  NDI suspects are the responsibility of the examiner (that art stuff).  I know that's not the answer you would like to have but sometimes things aren't just black and white.  Not everything needs to be scientifically valid, have empiracal evidence and be peer reviewed for it to work.  I truly believe those topics were created to keep academians gainfully employed.  I'm sure you've heard the term, if you can't do it, teach it.

Present facts even if it's to further criminal enterprise!  I think you're rationalizing.   

I agree the CQT is the best thing going.  I just wanted to make sure we had the record straight that R&I is still widely used and in my opinion effective.

Saidme,

Perhaps you could explain why a subject who understands the function of the "control" questions would respond more strongly to them than to the relevant questions if truthful, but if deceptive would instead respond more strongly to the relevant questions? What effort can a polygrapher exert to ensure such differential responding?

I'm not here to "throw stones" at you or anyone else, but rather to present facts, engage in rational discourse, and exchange ideas.

With regard to the use of R/I polygraphy, I think we can agree that it has largely been supplanted by CQT polygraphy. Of course it is still used. For example, DoDPI continues to teach it, and the NSA continues to use it for employee and applicant screening purposes. But R/I polygraphy has no plausible theoretical basis or support in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

George

I can tell you from experience (conducting polygraph examinations) that examinees do continue to respond to CQT, even armed with knowledge.  Again, it goes to the art and effort put forth by the examiner.  Every exam I go into, I go into it with an open mind and remain totally neutral.  If your statement ".....then there is little reason -- even by the theory of CQT polygraphy -- to expect truthful and deceptive subjects to respond differentially to them."  ...were true, then those examinee's I've conducted exams on who were familiar with polygraph should have probably ended up DI.  However, that was not always the case and those who were NDI were later completely exonerated of any wrongdoing through other evdience; some obtained as the result of the polygraph.   

It's easy to sit in your armchair and throw stones at those of us who are trying to do good work.  My only problem with you George is why do you do it?  Is there more to it than just a failed pre-employment polygraph?  Maybe there's other issues that should be explored.

Regarding R&I:  It's used much more than you know.

Saidme,

Certainly there is a difference between knowledge of a technique and intimate familiarity with it. But as I noted above, when a subject understands the function of the "control" questions (and they are relatively easy to pick out), then there is little reason -- even by the theory of CQT polygraphy -- to expect truthful and deceptive subjects to respond differentially to them.

As for the relevant/irrelevant technique that you suggest would work best on polygraph examiners, the theory of R/I polygraphy depends on wildly implausible assumptions, and the technique is widely discredited even among polygraph examiners themselves, who have for the most part abandoned it in favor of the CQT...

George

I would argue that there's a difference between knowledge of a technique and being intimately familiar with a technique.  I concur a CQT exam would probably not be the best examination for a polygraph examiner.  However, I have conducted several polygraph examinations (specific issue) on law enforcement personnel who had knowledge of polygraph.  CQT's worked great on them.  R&I would work best on polygraph examiners.

Saidme,

If the subject admits to knowledge of the function of the "control" questions, then even by CQT theory, there is no rational basis for the expectation that truthful subjects will respond more strongly to the "control" questions while deceptive subjects will respond more strongly to the relevant questions.

Public Servant understands this, I think, which is why I've asked him which technique, if any, he believes would be appropriate for use with such subjects.

George

Knowledge of CQT wouldn't necessarily cause an examinee problems (meaning the examiner could still use it).  Knowledge about a technique and the technique being performed on you are two entirely different affairs.   

Knowledge of a surgical procedure you're about to undertake and surgery being conducted on you are two totally different scenarios.  I don't care how much reading your criminals on this site do, it's not going to properly prepare them for their examination.  I believe deep down you know that to be true, particularly in light of how much study you've conducted regarding the topic.   

Public Servant,

The question I asked you on the 13th was not a rhetorical one, but rather one of fundamental importance for the polygraph field. What polygraph technique (if any) do you think would be appropriate for a subject who has admitted knowledge of the function of the control questions?

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Ah, that's the rub. The reason the PLCQT is so widely done is that it is considered the most reliable technique available applicable to screening. Presumably then, knowledge, in and off itself, reduces the effectiveness of the polygraph as the examiner reverts to a less desirable and less practiced protocol. Reminds me of a Fed. Civil Statue I ran across that specifically ordered that a jury was not to be informed of a specific portion of said statue.

Directed ignorance. How nice.

-Marty

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I was also amused by the story for the same reasons. Interesting and somewhat intense personality.

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ROFLMAO, I nearly mentioned the same thing myself! It would be intriguing to see what the time frame and recognition rate of the Doug Williams name would cause. Seriously, it would be ill advised to use the same terms in a GKT set given each individual. Assuming a reasonably large question set it would be fairly easy to identify and discard material fluctuations in the stochastics given a reasonable population sample size.

I am by nature an engineer-entrepreneur (therefore private sector - lol) and am always looking for ways to improve things. I rather like Drew's area of work, which looks to be a potentially improved GKT. I also truly think the GKT would be a lot more reliable in forensic work if somehow the examiners could be trained and critical mass reached. It is very natural to fall back on what one knows and no doubt CQT examiners have a strong gut belief in their abilities, warranted or not. Speaking of deluding oneself, so called "quants" and traders in the capital markets are such a group rife with them - the psychology is fascinating. And they tend to be quite bright.

-Marty

Public Servant,

I take it then that you agree that it would not be appropriate to administer a probable-lie control question test to a subject who has admitted knowledge of the function of the control questions?

Assuming that such is the case, what technique(s) do you think would be appropriate?

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George,

There are formats that do not use CQT.  In fact, looking at the excerpt from this book, I don't think the exam mentioned was CQT.  Makes it even more humorous that she was practicing such countermeasures...

Marty,

I like the thought process on your ideas of incorporating GKT.  Are you applying for a research position at DoDPI?

Just a small aside in regard to this: 
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I have one concern.  The man who shot up his co-workers in AL last week was named Doug Williams (presumably it was not our friend the "stinger").  This name is also shared by a former Super Bowl hero for the Redskins (obviously not the "stinger").  Possible sources for a false positive to such a GKT?!...Hard to say for sure.

orolan wrote on Jul 13^th, 2003 at 3:52am:


Absolutely. Totally inappropriate GKT question.

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Me neither. Also not a good idea for a GKT. There are a fairly good selection of candidate questions though, assuming an examinee has done enough research to understand the issues. For the ones that have not, they are likely not going to be able to deploy CM's effectively.

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The technology available these days makes this sort of thing feasible, at least amongst the larger organizations. It doesn't need to be done by all of them, just enough to obtain the demographics. I don't see any evidence they are doing this but they are clearly concerned. I assume that these issues are being looked at one way or another but who knows. The research in CM's has been classified for the last decade or so (according to Kleiner).

-Marty

Marty,
"Countermeasures" would be highly recognizable, but you would run the risk of a false+ if the examinee had a military aviation background or enjoyed fighter-sim computer games. Site-specific questions involving the actual site name would probably be rejected hands-down, because the examinee probably would come here immediately after the test to see what all the excitement was about, and then might learn the truth. Can't see the poly crowd allowing that to happen.
The idea of the examiner not seeing the results of the GKT questions sounds good, but the logistics seem impossible. In my two polys, the examiner sat there looking at the screen on his laptop, I assume at digital representations of charts being printed out elsewhere (I don't know, because I never saw one).
It would be difficult for him not to see the last two responses when reviewing the rest of them.

orolan wrote on Jul 13^th, 2003 at 1:53am:


I would use names or nomenclature specific to this site or William's site that would be highly recognizable to informed applicants but infrequently recognizable to uninformed ones. There are significant complexities to executing such a program (especially examiner bias) but it should be doable. It's important to remember that such a limited set really shouldn't be used in any way to score the examinee. Ideally, responses to the GKT Q's should be recorded electronicaly and sent to QC without the examiner even being in the loop.

-Marty

Marty,
The idea of GKT questions tacked on to the end of a CQT seems to have merit, but what would you ask? Just curious, as usual.

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Indeed, this is a common theme as it really is a fundamental problem and requires the polygrapher's to switch to a different approach or bamboozle the examinee into thinking a control really is a relevant. This area fascinates me which is why I am looking into the general psychology of persuasion with respected exponents such as Cialdini, and other, less respected (in academe) but perhaps more adept practitioners such as Rowland.

A critical QC measure is (I would assume) determining the percentage of applicants that are familiar with the CQT. While giving every applicant an extensive GKT should go a long way to establishing this statistic, it would interfere with the CQT screenings. OTOH, a pair of GKT questions, tacked onto each CQT, would provide the supervising QC folks with this statisitic and allow them to track this vs other variables such as applicant technical background, etc. to establish guidelines as to when other approaches such as DLT should be used instead.

Such a limited sampling of GKT questions would be close to worthless as an indicator for an individual candidate, and shouldn't be individually scored,  but over the course of hundreds of exams, should converge to a significant metric.

This would also provide a way for the polygraph community to actually measure a part of the impact of sites such as this.

-Marty

Public Servant,

Let's suppose an examinee admits to you that he/she used countermeasures and you decide to do a re-test. You now know that the examinee understands the function of the probable-lie "control" questions. On what rational basis do you expect a truthful examinee to respond more strongly to the "control" questions, and a deceptive examinee to respond more strongly to the relevant questions?

George and Canadian Crusader,

An admission of some sort that could explain the response to the relevant question could cause me to offer a second series.  

I would never consider a DI without confession the result of artifact.  I would consider something that looked like an artifact, or occurred during a known artifact causing incident (movement, noise, cough, etc), an artifact.  A DI without a confession, otherwise is just that, a DI.  Most artifacts don't occur over and over at particular questions; unless the artifact is a deliberate act-- ie. counter-measures.

And yes, I would give another exam in the scenario cited, if the examinee admitted to CMs.  If they were silly enough to CM on a relevant, there should be even less concern that they could actually "beat" the test.  Then I could either catch them in a lie outright, or clear them on the relevant issue (with a footnote in the file that they weren't the sharpest tool in the shed, nor of the highest integrity).  The purpose of the exam is to get to the truth on the relevant issue.  The decision of suitability for the job (in this scenario) is up to the adjudicator to whom the examiner suppies all the facts he obtains. 

Honesty is still the best policy, especially when you are trying to get hired to a government agency.

Regards.

A spike on the charts coinciding with a relevant question is proof (in the pro-poly realm) of deception is it not?  If a polygrapher saw a spike to a relevant question such as undetected major crime, would they not take that to the bank and grill the examinee for an admission during the post poly interogation?

Also, Public Servant, are you telling us that you would give the examinee a second chance if he/she admitted to using countermeasures?  Please!  Why would you continue to waste your time after obtaining such a disqualifying admission from someone clearly trying to beat your machine?   Would you not shut the machine off, walk them out of the room and write a big FAIL on their chart?

Public Servant,

What kinds of things might have given the examiner a reason to conduct a second chart collection? As Saidme has acknowledged, it is not common polygraph practice to re-categorize significant reactions as "artifacts" when a subject makes no admission.