Cognitive and emotional correlates of different types of deception

We examined whether or not psychophysiological measures could be used to discriminate between 4 types of lies. Alpha-band event-related desynchronization (ERD) and skin conductance response (SCR) measures successfully discriminated between deception and truth. However, when deception was divided into 4 subsets, different patterns of ERD and SCR values were observed. There were substantial differences in ERD produced by instructed memorized lies, instructed created lies, spontaneously memorized lies, and truth. In contrast, SCR was a strong discriminator between created lies and truth. The results indicated that ERD could be sensitive to the cognitive activation caused by deception. Also, the strengths and weaknesses of both SCR and ERD measures could be supplemented when used together to detect different types of deception.