The P300 is sensitive to concealed face recognition

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Abstract

In two experiments, we investigated whether a P300 based Concealed Information Test (CIT) can be used to detect concealed face recognition. The results show that detection of concealed face recognition is highly successful when stimuli depict persons who are personally highly familiar, and instructions to conceal recognition are given. When pictures depict recognized, but personally less familiar faces, and no specific instructions to conceal recognition are given, detection is unsuccessful. These findings indicate that pictures of faces can be used in a P300 based CIT, and that mere recognition is not sufficient for successful detection of concealed information.

Introduction

The P300 component of the Event Related Potential (ERP) has been used for the detection of concealed information for almost two decades (Farwell and Donchin, 1991, Rosenfeld et al., 1988). Although the practical use of P300 based Concealed Information Tests (CITs) has been limited so far (e.g., Harrington v. Iowa,1 2000; Miyake et al., 1993), many researchers in the field emphasize the method's strengths (Ben Shakhar et al., 2002, Elaad, 1998, Iacono, 2007). Accordingly, in its 2003 report, the authoritative National Research Council recommended further investigation of measurement of event-related potentials as an alternative or supplement to the polygraph (National Research Council, 2003).

The rationale underlying the P300 based CIT is that rare, meaningful stimuli elicit a P300 (Donchin and Coles, 1988, Rosenfeld, 2002). Stimuli that are meaningful to the individual, like autobiographical information, have been shown to elicit a P300 waveform when presented infrequently in a series, intermixed with irrelevant stimuli (Berlad and Pratt, 1995, Gray et al., 2004). Consequently, the P300 can be used to detect simulated amnesia for autobiographical facts (Rosenfeld et al., 1995). When a crime has been committed, crime-related details are thought to be meaningful to the perpetrator, but not to an innocent suspect. Therefore, if crime-relevant details are presented infrequently in a series of equally plausible, but crime-unrelated details, the crime-related details are expected to elicit a P300, but only so in guilty suspects.

The majority of studies investigating P300 based CITs used words or short phrases as stimuli. These words or phrases generally refer to either autobiographical information (e.g., Rosenfeld et al., 1995), mock crime-related information (e.g., Farwell and Donchin, 1991, Rosenfeld et al., 1988), or incidentally rehearsed information (e.g., Allen et al., 1992, Ellwanger et al., 1996). In a typical P300 based CIT, these words of phrases belong to one of three types, namely targets, probes and irrelevants (e.g., Farwell and Donchin, 1991). The probe is the stimulus of interest, of which the participant denies knowledge. The target is a stimulus that has been made task relevant through instructions, and serves to ensure participant cooperation. The irrelevant stimuli are equally plausible, but unrelated to the crime. The participant is instructed to acknowledge recognition of the target by pressing one button, and press another button with any other stimulus (probe and irrelevants). For an innocent participant, probe and irrelevants are indistinguishable, and thus no difference in P300 is expected. For a guilty participant, on the other hand, the probe should stand out and elicit a P300.

As noted, the majority of studies investigating P300 based CITs used words or short phrases as stimuli. Photographic stimuli have seldom been used, whereas especially the use of pictures of faces might be relevant. In this study, we investigated whether pictures of faces can be used in a P300 based CIT.

Many studies have investigated the cognitive processes underlying face perception and recognition. Associated ERP components include an occipito-temporal N170, thought to reflect face perception (Bentin et al., 1996), the inferior temporal N250r found in repetition priming paradigms (Begleiter et al., 1995, Schweinberger et al., 2002), the centro-parietal N400 component that is thought to reflect the facilitation in accessing postperceptual or semantic memory codes for people (Schweinberger and Burton, 2003) and a centro-parietally distributed late positive component (P300/LPC).2 Especially the latter has been found to be sensitive to the recognition of familiar faces, whether famous (Henson et al., 2003), learned during a study phase (Joyce and Kutas, 2005, Paller et al., 1999, Paller et al., 2000, Paller et al., 2003), or the participant's own face (Ninomiya et al., 1998). Moreover, a late positive ERP component in response to familiar faces has even been observed in prosopagnosia patients, regardless of their incapability of familiar face recognition (Bobes et al., 2004, Renault et al., 1989). However, paradigms used in the studies cited above vary greatly and in each case deviate from a typical P300 based CIT. Still, the finding that familiar faces elicit a distinct late positive ERP component supports the idea that ERPs may serve as indicators of concealed face recognition. With these considerations in mind, the aim of our first experiment was to explore whether the P300 could be used to infer concealed face recognition.

In a second experiment, we tested whether mere recognition was sufficient to detect face recognition. In a typical CIT experiment, participants are instructed to conceal recognition of the probe. But several studies have shown that a P300 can also be elicited under passive conditions, i.e., without specific task instructions (Polich, 1987, Polich, 1989; but see Bennington and Polich, 1999), indicating that, at least to some extent, the P300 indexes automatic processing (Sommer et al., 1998). In the second experiment we tested whether a P300 to familiar faces is also present in the absence of specific instructions to conceal recognition of the probe.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 24 undergraduate students (4 men) at Maastricht University (average age 23.1 years; range 18–35). They read and signed an informed consent, and received course credits for their participation. The experiment was approved by the ethical committee of the Faculty of Psychology, Maastricht University.

Stimuli

Every participant was asked to bring two passport photos: one of a sibling and one of a good friend. The persons on the two photos had to be of the same sex. These photos were scanned

Participants

Participants were 29 first-year students at Maastricht University. Five of them were dropped from the analysis because they could not correctly identify the critical photos after the experiment (see Experimental design and procedure section). Thus, the remaining sample consisted of 24 participants (average age 19.7 years; range 18–24, 2 men). Twelve of them were first-year psychology students, whereas the other 12 were first-year health sciences students. They read and signed an informed

General discussion

The aim of this study was two-fold. Firstly, we investigated whether a typical P300 based CIT can be used to detect concealed face recognition. Secondly, we investigated whether this effect could be explained by mere recognition processes. The CIT in Experiment 1 was successful, both in terms of statistical significance at the group level as well as in terms of individual classification. Experiment 2 showed that this effect could not be explained by mere recognition.

The results from Experiment

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Nittono, Dr. Rosenfeld and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We also thank Marleen van Osch for her assistance in data collection.

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