Eye tracking to detect lies, polygraph not the only resort
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 13 July 2010, 18:30 IST   |    3 Comments
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Bangalore: Detecting lies by tracking eye movement became possible recently because of the advent of technology. Educational psychologists-John, Kircher, Doug Hacker, Anne Cook, Don Waltz and David Raskin are making use of an eye tracking technology to provide an alternative to the polygraph for lie detection. The researchers from the University of Utah, claim they are the first to develop and assess the software and methods for applying these tests effectively and would be commercializing in coming years. Instead of measuring a person's emotional reaction, which usually a polygraph test does, eye tracking technology can measure a person's cognitive reaction. A number of measurements were recorded by Utah researchers while a subject is answering a series of true and false questions on a computer. The pupil dilution, response time, reading and rereading time and errors were measured by the Utah researchers. The researchers wanted to know whether the subject is working hard to hide the truth or not as they determined that, speaking the truth is much easier than lying. "We have gotten great results from our experiments. They are as good as or better than the polygraph and we are still in the early stages of this innovative new method to determine if someone is trying to deceive you," says Kircher. Eye tracking would cost relatively lesser than polygraph and requires one fifth of the time currently needed for examinations. Besides that, it requires no attachment to the subject being tested, be available in any language and can be supervised by technicians rather than qualified polygraph examiners.

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