anxietyguy,

The countermeasures suggested for the R/I technique in TLBTLD are based on federal scoring standards. There's no telling what scoring criteria a non-federal agency might employ. In such a case, it may be best to stick to behavioral countermeasures.

I have heard of more pre-employment poly's going this way in my area for law enforcement...i dont know if reacting to two different relevant questions is the way to go..anyone have input?
Anxiety

After reviewing this thread what is the best approach, showing a reaction to two different relevant questions on two different charts?Or possibly showing a reaction to an irrelevant question?
Anxiety

The R/I is believed to have a higher false positive rate, but lower false negative rate than the PLCQT (see Matte). While it doesn't require the examiner deception of a PLCQT, to be effective, the examinee needs to believe the polygraph will be accurate in their examination and so there is a bit of chicken and egg situation here. Since the relevants are stark and obvious, many will not be sufficiently calmed by the examiner and may score sufficiently above baseline to be found deceptive. Another problem is individual differences. Early in the history of polygraphy, examiners tried various techniques to account for these variances and the PLCQT evolved as an improved approach - in spite of the obvious ethical issues involved.

One problem with both R/I and PLCQTs are that examinees who are familiar with the techniques involved may yield higher false positives on the R/I while the PLCQT may yield higher false negtatives as the test essentially changes into a DLCQT.

There is some, fairly polarized debate about the DLCQT, especially re false negatives. Much speculation, too little actual research.

Marty

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Brandon,

"Are the lights on in this room?" is an example of an irrelevant question (IR). 

In fact, IR's are not "filler" at all, nor are they "ridiculous," as you imply.  Irrelevant questions are inserted at the beginning of a polygraph chart to absorb the examinee's "orienting response" and are distributed throughout the test to allow the examine to return to a state of homeostasis after a physiological response to a particular question.

In addition, although I do not get into any lengthy  discussions over the specific purpose of the the IR questions, I certainly do not withhold any information regarding their use from the examinee, especially if he asks.

Now, not to sound like a "broken record," but I still fail to see how I am deceiving anybody...

Regards,

Nonombre      
???

Nonombre,

I suppose the deception on the examiner's part would be the lack of full disclosure about the test.  Do you explain to your examinee's that you will be asking a series of questions in the in-test, however only certain questions will be scored while the remainder is filler?  A naive examinee believes all questions to hold the same importance, even the ridiculous, "Are the lights on in this room?" for example.

To me the R/I sounds to be more like a GKT.

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Brandon,

Staying on the concept of the R/I for a moment, the fact is during R/I testing, nothing is held back from the examinee.  All the instrumentation is explained, as well as the physiology involved.  The relevant questions are fully explained (there are no "contols") and the examinee is even told that the examiner looks for specific, consistant, and significant responses. 

The examinee is told the procedure and instrumentation utilized enables the examiner to make certain inferences regarding truth and deception, because based on training and experience, the examiner believes he/she can make that inference (whether the folks on this site believe it or not).

Lastly, I tell the examinee to make sure to discuss anything that may cause him a concern during the test, because if he does not bring it up during the pre-test interview, he will most certainly be thinking about it during the test and potentially causing problems.  That happens to be the truth and:   

I am not for a moment "making the examinee believe" anything I do not believe myself.

Once again, I am at a loss as to how I am "decieving" the examinee.  Please explain.

Nonombre

Nonombre,

I believe the notion that the polygrapher is the deceiver is derived from the fact that the test is only partially explained to the examinee.  If the test were to be explained in whole, the examinee would certainly have a much better idea of how the test functions.  As examinees we are told to never hold anything back and provide full explanation and complete truth.  However, if an examinee does so then the test is unable to function as proposed.  Therefore deception on the examiners part is crucial in an attempt to make the examinee believe the test is actually accurate in detecting deception.

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Dr Richardson,

Although it seems to me that you have answered my question with a question (I simply asked you how you would apply physiological countermeasures in such a way as to ASSURE you would "beat" an R/I style test), I will go ahead and answer your question to the best of my ability.

Youself and others on this site, point to the preparation of a polygraph examinee prior to a PLC style test as "lies, and deception" on the part of the examiner.  Although I disagree with that point of view, I understand why you might believe that way.

However, in an R/I type test, there is no such "preparation" of the examinee.  When I conduct this type test (yes, I have conducted a number of formats including this one) I simply review the test questions with the examinee and conduct the examination.  I am at a loss as to where you get:

"lie detection” is about deception and that the initial (perhaps only) deceiver (the examiner) should not be trusted."

I know you don't believe this, but I have conducted many polygraph examinations (to include R/I type tests) where I have simply shaken the examinee's hand after the test and wished him/her a nice day.  Please explain to me how that makes me a "deceiver." and that I "should not be trusted."

Then please answer my original question.

Regards,

Nonombre

Nonombre,

Perhaps in my absence and prior to my fully answering your question (there is a general approach for all examinees and a different targeted approach for those who would seek to insure non-deceptive charts while being "guilty" (beat the test) vs. those who are innocent (overcome the inherent error associated with this form of testing) with an RI exam--I will discuss only the latter of the two targeted approaches for obvious reasons), you might address the issues I raised.  You suggested an examinee should freely discuss his concerns with his examiner.  I have stated that “lie detection” is about deception and that the initial (perhaps only) deceiver (the examiner) should not be trusted nor sought out for advice.  I have given several examples of this type of deception (http://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.pl?board=Proc;action=display;num=99... ).  Would you comment on these areas that I have labeled as misrepresentation, falsification, exaggeration, outright deception, etc.  Would you agree that they are?  If not, why not, and if so, in light of this behavior why would you suggest any examinee should make himself/herself vulnerable to such an examiner through the sharing of problems and confidences?  Regards,

Nonombre,

I am in the midst of international travel at the moment, but will gladly answer your question when next I am settled.  For the time being, I repeat (largely for those who might remotely consider discussing their problems with a polygrapher) the previous post:

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Regards,

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George,

I have a question regarding the info on page 151. It states that polygraphers--during th the Rel/Irrel test--are looking for significant changes to patterned relevant questions, and  (quoted from the page) "one can prevent such a pattern from occuring by simply producing responses to two differing groups of relevant questions within the different chart presentations." What exactly does this mean? Are you supposed to produce varying a responses to to groups of relevant questions to stop a pattern from forming? If so, will this not alert the examiner? What is the the best CM approach for Rel/Irrel test?

Thanks!  

Sergeant,

I understand your point, I truly do, and you do know from previous postings I am not generally a confrontative type of guy.  However, I must insist on holding Dr. Richardson's feet to the fire on this point.  He is afterall, the Antipolygraph.com countermeasure "guru."  If he is what he is reported to be, then I would love to hear him talk about how he would (with a high level of certainty) "beat" an RI test..

Regards...

Nonombre

nonombre wrote on Aug 4^th, 2005 at 3:16am:

Nonombre,

I am certainly not trying to answer for Drew, but I thought I’d add my opinion…

There is no way of being certain you can “beat” the test for an RI exam, because you can be “failed” for any of a number of reasons totally unrelated to actual deception.  In that way it is just like the other forms of polygraph testing.  I know from personal experience that being completely truthful and not withholding any information does not guarantee that you can “beat” the test.   In fact doing so resulted in a failure rate of 75% for the four polygraphs I had to endure.

To me, this cuts to the heart of the matter regarding polygraphs.  If a person can take a polygraph, tell the complete truth and not withhold anything even remotely relevant, and still fail three out of four times that indicates a fatal flaw in the test itself.

I’m not interested in comparisons with the subjective oral board interviews or the subjective background investigation.  The polygraph is supposed to obtain damaging admissions and/or provide data to conclude if the subject is being truthful or deceptive with regards to the relevant questions.  That is its function, and it is largely ineffective in fulfilling that function.

If the subject does not believe in the myth of the polygraph as a “lie detector” then no damaging admissions will be forthcoming.   

Anything less than 100% accuracy in the truthful vs. deceptive assessment is worthless.  If you want to use an accuracy rate of 75% (which I believe is significantly higher than reality, but I’ll use it for purposes of discussion) then for every hundred subjects who are labeled as deceptive, twenty-five of them were actually truthful.  Which ones?  It’s impossible to tell, and that’s where the polygraph falls short with its less-than-complete-accuracy.

If a truthful subject can be branded as deceptive a significant percentage of the time, and a deceptive subject can be labeled as truthful a significant percentage of the time, then what is the final utility of the polygraph?  Other than as an interrogation intimidator to be used for extracting confessions from unwitting subjects, I can’t see any legitimate use.

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Dr. Richardson,

So if faced with a requirement to take an RI polygraph examination,  how does one ensure he will in all cases "beat" the test?"  How would you do it?

Nonombre

Quote:


Opp,

The RI is utilized in several forms by a growing number of state and local police departments (I'm sorry, I don't have an actual list.) 

In addition, I know for sure that RI is the primary procedure for several of the federal intelligence agencies and is a secondary procedure for virtually ever federal law enforcement agency.

I hope this helps.

Nonombre

Nonombre,

The fact that the control is missing in the so-called probable-lie control question test (PLCQT) does not make lack of scientific control a virtue.  The RI technique was completely discredited (and is currently held in disdain by the handful of serious academics who support specific incident polygraphy) because quite apart from the issue of and any application of countermeasures, the test has no validity whatsoever and amounts to little more than the asking of a number of obvious (to everyone) hot button items that anybody and everybody would respond to for any number of reasons quite apart from deception.   If you administer such a test you should be ashamed.  With regard to choosing whether to apply countermeasures, that is a decision in the purview of each examinee.  I would not question an examinee's decision to either apply or refrain from applying countermeasures.  I would question the sanity of any examinee that is familiar with this site and TLBTLD and who chooses to discuss his problems and concerns with a polygrapher.  Your business is about deception (see my considerably earlier post: http://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.pl?board=Proc;action=display;num=99...;   for a description of this routine deception as displayed in a  CQT exam) and a deceiver is neither to be trusted nor sought out as an adviser.

nonombre,

Is this a common test format and which agency uses it more often?

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Opp,

If you read the LBTLD, you will be told a attempt to accentuate different groups of relevant questions during different points in the test.

This is bad advice because you will in all probability be already responding consistantly to the relevant areas in which you know you are being untruthful (psychological set).  Therefore by enhancing your responses, you will simply be coming up "deceptive" to areas you probability shouldn't be.

The bottom line is due to the lack of comparison/contol questions, there is no way you can have any chance of success in applying countermeasures.

George and company know this, for whenever openly challenged on this fact, typically come back with some form of "The RI is a completely invalid format, abandoned by most of the polygraph community."

That means, they know there is no way to "beat" this test based on the methods they teach, so they attack those who administer this particular procedure.

Have you considered discussing whatever concerns you have with the examiner prior to the exam, then simply cooperating with the testing methodology?   

I know I am going to be boiled in oil for my last statement.  I guess I just could help myself.   

Nonombre

The methodology used in the Relevant/Irrelevant technique is addressed at p. 177 ff. of the 4th edition of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector and a countermeasure approach is discussed at p. 151.

If the irrelevant questions are not scored and only the relevant questions are, how can the examinee counter this test format? I guess that it would be very difficult to pass for those who intend to lie or even for the complete honest individuals. I also wonder how they score this test. If the examiner asks five relevant questions, does the examiner examine which of the five questions had the strongest reactions and what if all five have completely different reactions? I would assume that a control question at some point is necessary.  Also, which agencies tend to implement this method for often?