Sketching as a Technique to Eliciting Information and Cues to Deceit in Interpreter-Based Interviews

We tested the effect of sketching while providing a narrative on eliciting information, eliciting cues to deceit, and lie detection in interpreter-absent and interpreter-present interviews. A total of 204 participants from the USA (Hispanic participants only), Russia, and the Republic of Korea were interviewed in their native language by native interviewers or by a British interviewer through an interpreter. Truth-tellers discussed a trip they had made; liars fabricated a story about such a trip. Half of the participants were instructed to sketch while narrating; the other half received no instruction. Sketching resulted in more details provided. It also elicited cues to deceit: complications and new details differentiated truth-tellers from liars in the Sketching-present condition only. Liars and truth-tellers were more correctly classified in the Sketching-present than in the Sketching-absent condition. More complications and more common-knowledge details were reported without than with an interpreter. General Audience Summary We tested the effect of sketching while providing a narrative on obtaining information from truth-tellers and liars in interpreter-absent and interpreter-present interviews. We hypothesized that sketching while narrating would lead to more new information than just narrating, particularly in truth-tellers. Sketching while narrating helps truth-tellers to remember better and to report better what they remember. Liars may be unable to include as many details as truth-tellers because they lack the imagination to fabricate these details or are unwilling to say much out of fear that this will give leads to investigators that they are lying. In the experiment, 204 participants from the USA (Hispanic participants only), Russia, and the Republic of Korea were interviewed in their native language by native interviewers or by a British interviewer through an interpreter. Truth-tellers discussed a trip they had made during the last twelve months; liars fabricated a story about such a trip. Half of the participants were invited to sketch while narrating, whereas the other half of the participants were not requested to sketch. As predicted, sketching resulted in more new information, particularly amongst truth-tellers. The presence of an interpreter did not affect these results.