lie detector 3 adv

NEWS LESSONS / A new form of lie-detector test / Advanced•P

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A new form of lie-detector test

Level 3 l Advanced

Key words2

Warmer 1

Read the definitions and find the words in the article. The paragraph numbers are given to help you.

1. prove in a court of law that someone is guilty of a crime ____________________ (para 1)

2. discover something or someone that was not known before or that people had kept secret, especially by searching very thoroughly ____________________ (para 1)

3. not existing or working any more ____________________ (para 3)

4. sudden movements of a muscle that you cannot control, especially in your face ____________________ (para 3)

5. doubts that someone has about something that other people think is true or right ____________________ (para 4)

6. a principle or statement that you consider to be true, which you base other ideas and actions on ____________________ (para 5)

7. keep making small, quick movements with parts of your body because you are bored, nervous or impatient ____________________ (para 5)

8. the act of tricking someone by telling them something that is not true ____________________ (para 6)

9. something that helps a system, organization or person to be strong or to continue to exist ____________________ (para 7)

10. find out something ____________________ (para 12)

11. not capable of making mistakes ____________________ (para 13)

12. agreement among all the people involved ____________________ (para 13)

13. something extremely valuable or useful ____________________ (para 19, two words)

14. confuse ____________________ (para 20)

15. take action to reduce the effectiveness of something ____________________ (para 22)

16. a movement, action or expression on someone’s face that shows the truth about something ____________________ (para 22)

Complete these sentences with your own words. Do not use a dictionary! Then, compare your sentences with other students.

a. A lie is …

b. A lie detector is …


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Level 3 l AdvancedBritish and Dutch researchers develop new form of lie-detector test Polygraph replacement could be in use in police stations around the world within a decade Ewen MacAskill, defence and security correspondent 4 January, 2015

1 Police and intelligence agencies around the world have, for almost 100 years, relied on lie detectors to help convict criminals or unearth spies and traitors.

2 The polygraph is beloved of the movies, with countless dramatic moments showing the guilty sweating profusely as they are hooked up.

3 But the invention could soon be defunct. Researchers in Britain and the Netherlands have made a breakthrough, developing a method with a success rate in tests of over 70% that could be in use in police stations around the world within a decade. Rather than relying on facial tics, talking too much or waving of arms – all seen as tell-tale signs of lying – the new method involves monitoring full-body motions to provide an indicator of signs of guilty feelings.

4 The polygraph is widely used in the US in criminal and other cases and for security clearance for the FBI and CIA but is much less popular in Europe. There has been a lot of scepticism in the scientific and legal communities about its reliability. By contrast, the new method developed by the researchers has performed well in experiments.

5 The basic premise is that liars fidget more and so the use of an all-body motion suit – the kind used in films to create computer-generated characters – will pick this up. The suit contains 17 sensors that register movement up to 120 times per second in three dimensions for 23 joints.

6 One of the research team, Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said: “Decades of deception research show that the interviewer will tell truth from lies only slightly better than random, about 55 out of 100.

7 “The polygraph has been around since the 1920s and, by measuring physiological stress induced by anxiety, you can get to 60. However, it can easily be abused as an interrogation prop and many people are anxious anyway facing a polygraph on which their job or liberty depends.”

8 He said the new method, by contrast, achieved a reliability rating of over 70% and he was confident

they would be able to do better. In some tests, the team has already achieved more than 80%.

9 Anderson said: “The takeaway message is that guilty people fidget more and we can measure this robustly.”

10 Anderson added that the research had a special significance at this time, against the background of the US Senate report on torture by the CIA. Apart from the moral case against torture, Anderson pointed out that it was a very unreliable way of gathering accurate information. “We have known for a long time that torture does not work,” he said. The new method offers a pragmatic, scientifically backed alternative to conducting interviews.

11 The research paper was written by Dr Sophie van der Zee of Cambridge University, Professor Ronald Poppe of Utrecht University, Professor Paul Taylor of Lancaster University and Anderson.

12 The polygraph was created in 1921 by policeman John Larson, based on research by the psychologist William Marston. It records changes in pulse, blood pressure, sweating and breathing to ascertain whether a subject is lying.

13 While cinema depictions suggest the device is near-infallible, the US Supreme Court ruled, in 1998, that there was no consensus that the polygraph was reliable, a finding supported by the US National Academy of Scientists in 2003.

14 The experiment carried out by Anderson and his colleagues involved 180 students and employees at Lancaster University, of which half were told to tell the truth and half to lie. They were each paid £7.50 for their participation in the 70-minute experiment, involving two tests.

15 Some were interviewed about a computer game Never End, which they played for seven minutes, while others lied about playing it, having only been shown notes about it.

16 The second test involved a lost wallet containing £5. Some were asked to bring the wallet to a lost-and-found box while others hid it and lied about it.

17 “Overall, we correctly classified 82.2% (truths: 88.9%; lies: 75.6%) of the interviewees as either being truthful or deceptive based on the combined movement in their individual limbs,” the report says.

18 Anderson said: “Our first attempt looked at the extent to which different body parts and body signals indicated deception. It turned out that liars wave their arms more but, again, this is only at the


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Level 3 l Advanced

Word formation4

Comprehension check3

60% level that you can get from a conventional polygraph.

19 “The pay dirt was when we considered total body motion. That turns out to tell truth from lies over 70% of the time and we believe it can be improved still further by combining it with optimal questioning techniques.”

20 Another advantage is that total body motion is relatively unaffected by cultural background, anxiety and cognitive load (how much you are thinking), which confound other lie-detection technologies, Anderson said.

21 The use of all-body suits is expensive – they cost about £30,000 – and can be uncomfortable, and

Anderson and his colleagues are now looking at low-cost alternatives. These include using motion-sensing technology from computer games, such as the Kinect devices developed by Microsoft for the Xbox console.

22 Anderson acknowledges that agencies such as the CIA could teach agents how to counter the full-body motion method by freezing their bodies but he said that in itself would be a giveaway.

© Guardian News and Media 2015First published in The Guardian, 04/01/15

What can you remember? Try to answer the questions without referring back to the article.

1. Who invented the polygraph lie detector?

2. How does it work?

3. Who uses it and for what purposes?

4. Why is it sometimes considered to be unreliable?

5. How does the new lie-detector suit work?

6. How reliable is it?

7. What benefits does it have over other lie-detection technologies?

8. What are the downsides of the new method?

9. Where does the technology that the new suit uses come from?

Complete the table with related words. There may be more than one word in each box.

verb noun adjective

– scepticism

interrogation

deceive

experimental

convict

detect


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Webquest6

A game7

Find images of the polygraph lie detector. Does it look as you thought it would?

Read more about the technology behind the new motion-suit lie detector here: https://www.xsens.com/products/xsens-mvn/.

Find out whether the use of lie detectors is legal in your country. If it is legal, can the results be used in court?

Group 1: For each question you are asked, either tell A LIE or THE TRUTH, depending on what your card says. Make sure no one in the other group can see your card.

Group 2: Can you decide who is telling the truth and who is lying?

Questions

1. What is your mother’s first name?

2. Where were you born?

3. What did you have for breakfast today?

4. What did you do yesterday evening?

5. Where are you going after the class?

6. When did you last speak English outside the class?

Compare and contrast5Compare the meanings of the words in each set. Talk about their similarities and differences.

1. a. interrogation

2. a. police

3. a. FBI

4. a. US Senate

b. interview

b. intelligence agencies

b. CIA

b. US Supreme Court


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KEY

1 Warmer

a. … something that you say or write that is not true and that you know is not true.

b. … a piece of equipment used for checking whether someone is telling the truth.

2 Key words

1. convict2. unearth3. defunct4. tics5. scepticism6. premise7. fidget8. deception9. prop10. ascertain11. infallible12. consensus13. pay dirt14. confound15. counter16. giveaway

3 Comprehension check

1. It was created in 1921 by policeman John Larson, based on research by the psychologist William Marston.

2. It records changes in pulse, blood pressure, sweating and breathing to ascertain whether a subject is lying.

3. It is widely used in the US in criminal and other cases, for interrogation and for security clearance for the FBI and CIA but is much less popular in Europe.

4. It has only a 60% success rate. It can easily be abused as an interrogation prop and many people are anxious anyway facing a polygraph. The US Supreme Court ruled that there was no consensus that the polygraph was reliable, a finding supported by the US National Academy of Scientists.

5. It involves monitoring full-body motions, the basic premise being that liars fidget more.

6. It is over 70% accurate.7. Total body motion is relatively unaffected by cultural

background, anxiety and cognitive load (how much you are thinking), which confound other lie-detection technologies.

8. It is expensive and agents may learn to counter it.9. film animation

4 Word formation

5 Compare and contrast

1. a. the process of asking someone a lot of questions,

often in an angry or threatening way, in order to get information

b. a meeting in which someone asks another person, especially a famous person, questions about themselves; a formal meeting in which someone

verb noun adjective– scepticism

sceptic (person)sceptical

interrogate interrogationinterrogator

(person)interrogative

interrogative

deceive deceptiondeceiver (person)

deceptive

experiment experimentexperimenter

(person)experimentation

experimental

convict convictionconvict (person)

convicted

detect detectiondetector

detective (person)

(in / un)detectable(un)detected


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KEY

asks you questions to find out if you are suitable for a job; an official meeting in which the police ask someone questions about a crime; a meeting in which someone asks you a series of questions as part of a research project

2. a. an organization that tries to catch criminals and

checks that people obey the lawb. government organizations that collect information

about the secret plans and activities of a foreign government, enemy etc

3. a. the Federal Bureau of Investigation: a US

government department that deals with serious crimes that affect more than one US state

b. the Central Intelligence Agency: a US government organization that collects secret political, military and other information about other countries and protects secret information about the US

4. a. the more senior part of the US Congress, the other

part being the House of Representativesb. the highest court in the US, which has authority

over all the other courts in the country’s legal system

7 A game

Teacher’s notesDivide the students into two groups. Tell the students in Group 1 to take one piece of card for each student in the group. On half of them, they should write A LIE and, on the other half, THE TRUTH. (You can prepare cards before the lesson instead, if you prefer.) They should then shuffle the cards and give one to each student in the group. They must take care that no one in the other group sees their card.Someone in Group 2 asks Group 1 the first question. Group 1 take turns to answer it, either lying or telling the truth, as per their card. Group 2, the researchers, must listen and watch carefully as each student in Group 1 gives their answer, and they must then discuss quietly who they think is

telling the truth and who is not. They should briefly note their guesses.When asked, the students in Group 1 should hold up one of their pieces of paper, revealing whether they told the truth or lied. Did Group 2 guess right? (If you want to make this competitive, write up on the board how many correct guesses the group made.) Students now swap roles, with Group 1 asking Group 2 the second question, and so on until all the questions have been asked. Students can add further questions of their own if they wish to extend the game.

lie detector 3 adv

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