The role of individual features of memory and impulsiveness in telling a true or false story in a realistic, clear, and reconstructible way.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to explore whether there was an interaction effect between such personal aspects and veracity on realism, clarity, and reconstructability of the story. Methods: A total of 158 participants took part in the experiment and were asked to tell a truth and a lie during an interview (veracity condition). They filled in a questionnaire measuring their metamemory performance and their level of functional and dysfunctional impulsivity. A k-means cluster analysis on metamemory and impulsivity was conducted, and three clusters were obtained: controlled-memory inefficient, controlled-memory efficient, and impulsive-average memory. Results: The results showed that participants scored higher on all three reality monitoring criteria when telling the truth than when lying. Further, a cluster membership by veracity interaction for realism was also significant, but when telling the truth, there was no difference between clusters in terms of realism used in the explanation. Follow-up analyses showed that, when lying, the level of realism in the story was significantly higher for people belonging to the cluster "impulsive-average memory" than for people belonging to the cluster "controlled-memory efficient", a result that seems to indicate that people with good memory and can control dysfunctional impulsivity have more difficulties when lying. Conclusions: Research has shown that realism, clarity, and reconstructability of the story, all part of reality monitoring, can be useful to assess veracity. Generally, truth tellers obtain higher scores on all three variables than liars, but there is some variability across individuals owing to their personal characteristics. Metamemory and impulsivity also play a role in deception. From the implications of the results, the limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are also provided.

Cues to deception: can complications, common knowledge details, and self-handicapping strategies discriminate between truths, embedded lies and outright lies in an Italian-speaking sample?

Deception research has shown that analysing verbal content can be effective to distinguish between truths and lies. However, most verbal cues are cues to truthfulness (truth tellers report the cue more than lie tellers), whereas cues to deception (lie tellers report the cue more than truth tellers) are largely absent. The complication approach, measuring complications (cue to truthfulness), common knowledge details (cue to deception), self-handicapping strategies (cue to deception), and the ratio of complications, aims to fill this gap in the literature. The present experiment examined the effectiveness of the complication approach when varying the amount of lying, with an Italian sample. Seventy-eight participants were assigned to one of three different experimental conditions: Truth tellers (telling the truth about the event), embedders (providing a mixture of truthful and false information) and outright lie tellers (providing false information). Participants were interviewed about a past experience concerning an out of the ordinary event. Complications discriminated truth tellers from lie tellers. The absence of significant effects for common knowledge details and self-handicapping strategies, the limitations of the experiment and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Quality of life changes over time and predictors in a large head and neck patients' cohort: secondary analysis from an Italian multi-center longitudinal, prospective, observational study-a study of the Italian Association of Radiotherapy and Clinical Oncology (AIRO) head and neck working group.

PURPOSE: The present study examined the longitudinal trajectories, through hierarchical modeling, of quality of life among patients with head and neck cancer, specifically symptoms burden, during radiotherapy, and in the follow-up period (1, 3, 6, and 12 months after completion of radiotherapy), through the M.D. Anderson Symptom Inventory Head and Neck questionnaire, formed by three factors. Furthermore, analyses were conducted controlling for socio-demographic as well as clinical characteristics. METHODS: Multi-level mixed-effects linear regression was used to estimate the association between quality of life and time, age, gender, household, educational level, employment status, ECOG performance status, human papilloma virus (HPV) status, surgery, chemotherapy, alcohol intake, and smoking. RESULTS: Among the 166 participants, time resulted to be a predictor of all the three questionnaire factors, namely, general and specific related symptoms and interference with daily life. Moreover, regarding symptom interference with daily activities factor, HPV-positive status played a significant role. Considering only HPV-negative patients, only time predicted patients' quality of life. Differently, among HPV-positive patients, other variables, such as gender, educational level, alcohol use, surgery, age at diagnosis, employment status, and ECOG status, resulted significant. CONCLUSION: It was evident that quality of life of patients with head and neck cancer declined during RT, whereas it slowly improved after ending treatment. Our results clarified the role of some socio-demographic and clinical variables, for instance, HPV, which would allow to develop treatments tailored to each patient.

Profiling the Interrogee: Applying the Person-Centered Approach in Investigative Interviewing Research.

In the past, deception detection research has explored whether there were specific personal characteristics that were related to lying and found that factors such as personality and morality are indeed related to lying. However, past research has usually focused on a variable-centered approach. Yet, a person-centered might be more suitable here as it allows for the study of people in an integrative manner. In this experiment, 673 students completed a questionnaire which included measures of the five factors of personality, the level of moral disengagement, the perceived cognitive load when lying, lying strategies, frequency of lying and the LiES scale, a tool measuring the tendency to tell self-serving, altruistic and vindicative lies. We performed a Latent Profile Analysis to integrate personality, moral disengagement, and perceived cognitive load scores into specific profiles. Then, we related profile membership to lying behavior. We obtained four profiles, and found that extraversion, moral disengagement, and the perceived cognitive load contributed most to profile differences. We also found that lying frequency did not differ across profiles, whereas lying tendency did. In conclusion, our results suggest that several facets of the individual play a joint role in lying behavior, and that adopting a person-centered approach might be a good strategy to explore the role of interpersonal differences in lie detection research.

Assessment of Family, Peers, and Externalising Behaviour Dimensions in Adolescence: The Proposal of a Comprehensive Instrument (FPEB).

In the context of externalising behaviour problems, risk factor research (RFR) focuses on risk and protective factors of juvenile delinquency, which can pertain to individual, system, and societal levels. Several instruments aiming at measuring these factors have been developed, but a comprehensive research tool is missing. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a questionnaire, the "Family, Peers, and Externalising Behaviour in adolescence" (FPEB) as a tool for assessing adolescents' tendency of externalising behaviour, the quality of relation with their parents, and peer-relations. FPEB was administered to 835 Italian students (36.8% males, age M = 13.81, SD = 1.54) together with the Moral Disengagement questionnaire to test concurrent validity. Data about socio-demographics and school performance were also collected. An EFA (Promax rotation, subsample A, n = 444) resulted in a four-factor structure that was corroborated by a CFA (subsample B, n = 388). The factors were "externalising behaviour" (var 13.16%), "peer relations difficulties" (var 11.10%), "Family conflict" (var 8.32%), and "lack of family negotiation" (var 7.11%) and showed good internal consistency (all α ≥ 0.65). There were differences between males and females in the correlational patterns of the four factors. The FPEB factors also showed good concurrent validity: two of the four factors ("lack of family negotiation" and "externalising behaviour") and the total score of the scale correlated with the "Moral disengagement scale", whereas peer relation difficulties did not. Further analyses also showed gender differences (except for "peer relations difficulties") and an association between students' school performance and "externalising behaviour", "family conflict", and the total FPEB scores. We concluded that the FPEB is a tool that is potentially useful to assess risk and protective factors and to plan targeted interventions (focusing on the specific area). Limitations and suggestions for further improvements are also discussed.

The Black Pedagogy Scale: A New Task to Explore Educational Practices for Children's Well-Being.

The present contribute focuses on the concept of "Black Pedagogy" (Rutschky, 1977; ISBN: 3548356702), meant as a set of educational practices assimilable into those that nowadays are included in the frame of physical and psychological maltreatment (e.g., corporal punishment, frightening children, etc.). The purpose of this work is to present our operationalization proposal of the concept and the results deriving from a first validation of the "Black Pedagogy Scale". The questionnaire was administered to 374 Italian university students in their university classrooms (pilot study with double administration) and to 830 Italian adults, parents of primary school-aged children, through an online survey platform (main study). In the pilot study, explorative analyses, paired-samples t-test and ML EFA (with Varimax rotation) were performed. In the main study, proprieties of the refined instrument and relations between the construct of Black Pedagogy and demographics were explored. The Black Pedagogy Scale (α > .8) resulted composed by three factors, consistently with what was initially hypothesized: "Values of Black Pedagogy" (var. 18.7%), "Education of children over time" (var. 10.6%) "Methods of Black Pedagogy" (var. 8.6%). Participants resulted more in agreement with Black Pedagogy's values rather than with its methods, and those with higher educational qualification showed less agreement with the construct, F(2, 813) = 28.22, p < .001, η² = .065. The possible legacy of a Black Pedagogy's forma mentis can contribute to explain why some detrimental disciplinary practices are culturally deemed as acceptable. Results suggest designing interventions focused on educational values to discourage such practices.

Police accuracy in truth/lie detection when judging baseline interviews.

Research has shown that a comparable truth baseline (CTB) approach elicits more cues to deception and results in higher accuracy rates than a small talk baseline. Past research focused on laypeople's accuracy rates. We examined whether the CTB also has a positive effect on law enforcement personnel accuracy. In this study, 95 police officers judged 10 interviews, whereby half of the senders told the truth, and the other half lied about a mock undercover mission. Half of the interviews included only questioning about the event under investigation, whereas the other half also included questioning aimed at creating a CTB. Total and truth accuracy did not differ, but observers who watched interviews with a CTB obtained higher lie detection accuracy rates than those who watched interviews without the baseline questioning. Signal detection analyses showed that this effect could be attributed to a decreased response bias in the CTB condition.

Observers' performance at evaluating truthfulness when provided with comparable truth or small talk baselines.

Research has shown that the comparable truth baseline technique outperforms the small talk with respect to the elicitation of cues to deception. However, their impact on observers' accuracy has not been evaluated yet. In this experiment, participants (N = 74) watched ten interviews where senders either lied or told the truth about a set of tasks. Half of the interviews were conducted with a comparable truth baseline, the other half with a small talk baseline. As predicted, results showed that observers in the comparable truth baseline condition outperformed participants in the small talk baseline condition in terms of total accuracy rates. The article sheds light on the impact of the two baseline techniques in distinguishing truth-tellers from liars and discourages the use of a small talk baseline. It also provides insights for future studies.

Factors affecting Observers' Accuracy when Assessing Credibility: The Effect of the Interaction between Media, Senders' Competence and Veracity.

The present experiment examined how the interaction between senders' communicative competence, veracity and the medium through which judgments were made affected observers' accuracy. Stimuli were obtained from a previous study. Observers (N = 220) judged the truthfulness of statements provided by a good truth teller, a good liar, a bad truth teller, and a bad liar presented either via an audio-only, video-only, audio-video, or transcript format. Log-linear analyses showed that the data were best explained via the saturated model, therefore indicating that all the four variables interacted, G2(0) = 0, p = 1, Q2 = 1. Follow-up analyses showed that the good liar and bad liar were best evaluated via the transcript (z = 2.5) and the audio-only medium (z = 3.9), respectively. Both the good truth teller and the bad truth teller were best assessed through the audio-video medium (z = 2.1, good truth teller, z = 3.4, bad truth teller). Results indicated that all the factors interacted and played a joint role on observers' accuracy. Difficulties and suggestions for choosing the right medium are presented.

Detecting Lies via a Theme-Selection Strategy.

Most of deception research has focused on past events that were either completely truthful or a complete fabrication. However, people often tell a mixture of truths and lies. This could enable investigators to make within-subjects comparisons between different themes discussed in one interview, which we examined in the current experiment. Seventy-three participants took part in the experiment and were asked to either tell the truth about two themes, or to tell the truth about one theme and lie about the second theme in a HUMINT setting. Results showed that examining the differences in the amount of detail provided by the interviewees for each theme- obtained through a Theme-Selection strategy (a within-subjects measure)- yielded stronger results than examining differences between truth tellers and liars based on the entire interview without accounting for themes (between-subjects measure). The present study therefore highlighted the effectiveness of within-subjects measurements to both discriminate truth tellers from liars and to discover which section of a statement is false.