Methodological improvements of the association-based concealed information test

Autor(en): Gaspar Lukacs, Ulrich Ansorge
Abstrakt: The Association-Based Concealed Information Test (A-CIT) is a deception-detection method, in which participants categorize personally relevant items (e.g., their own surnames) as probes together with categorically similar but irrelevant items (e.g., others’ surnames) by one key press A, while categorizing self-referring “inducer” items (e.g., “MINE” or “MY NAME”) with an alternative key press B, thereby establishing an association between self-relatedness and B and an incongruence between the self-relatedness of probes and A (Lukács, Gula, Szegedi-Hallgató & Csifcsák, 2017). The A-CIT's sensitivity to concealed information is reflected in an incongruence effect: slower responses to probes than to other surnames. To increase the relevance of categories, between trials of the original A-CIT, category-to-response mappings switched or repeated unpredictably. This, however, could have diminished incongruence effects, as the response labels were presented in the corners of the display, veering spatial attention away from the items at screen center. In the present online study (n = 294), we therefore tested two improved versions of the A-CIT that do not require spatial attention shifts to and from peripheral labels. One improved version presents per trial only one category label at screen center and requires comparison to the currently presented item. The other improved version is based on the Identification Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (ID-EAST), in which item categorization switches (or repeats) based on colors versus meanings of the central items. Both new versions outperformed the original A-CIT.
Organisation(en): Institut für Psychologie der Kognition, Emotion und Methoden
Journal: Acta Psychologica
Band: 194
Seiten: 7-16
Anzahl der Seiten: 10
ISSN: 0001-6918
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.01.010
Publikationsdatum: 03-2019
Peer-reviewed: Ja
ÖFOS 2012: 501011 Kognitionspsychologie
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Link zum Portal: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/63846007-77c0-436e-ae7c-b0f92727e15b