Pausing and the ‘Othello Error’
Publication: The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law
Volume 30, Number 1
Abstract
The idea of detecting deception from speech is very attractive from a law enforcement perspective, yet research considering the possibility has yielded conflicting results, due to the practical difficulties in investigating the topic. Scientific research is yet to provide forensic linguistics with a reliable means of discerning lies from truths. The present study explores the relationship between truthfulness and pausing behaviour. Various aspects of the acoustics of pausing behaviour were investigated for Standard Southern British English in 30 mock police interviews from the DyViS database (Nolan et al. 2009). A novel distinction was made between prescribed and unprescribed lies, to delineate a potential source of differences in the unscripted content of speakers’ untruthful responses. Among pause duration measures, statistically significant differences were found across all three response types (truth, prescribed lie, unprescribed lie) for response latency, between truths and lies for initial filled pauses, and between unprescribed lies and the other response types for silent pauses. For pause frequency measures, only internal filled pauses showed a statistically significant difference: truths differed from both types of lies, but prescribed lies did not differ from unprescribed lies. Theories of cognitive effort and attempted control are drawn on in accounting for these findings.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law
Volume 30 • Number 1 • 2023
Pages: 87 - 118
History
Published in print: 2023
Published online: 4 November 2024
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Related Content
Citations
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
Download article citation data for:
The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 2023 30:1, 87-118
The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 2023 30:1, 87-118