"Who Stole the Bat?" Deception Detection on the Basis of Actions

In work very relevant to national defense and homeland security, this paper describes software that performs symbolic reasoning (in particular., logical inference) to detect deception on the basis of actions. This is in sharp contrast with present approaches that detect deception based on physiological factors, as well as on verbal and non-verbal cues. Our approach attempts to model agents and their actions. This is achieved in a logic programming framework using a theory of agents, a theory of actions, and a theory of reasoning with respect to time. As a test case, a children's mystery is analyzed and implemented. The software correctly reasons about who the potential suspects are, and ultimately, correctly identifies the chief culprit. Further, it can correctly introspect with regard to previously held beliefs. Our approach is novel in that it attempts to identify deception on the basis of actions, and it does so in a high level, symbolic reasoning framework