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Useofuminthedeceptivespeechofaconvictedmurderer

GINAVILLAR,JOANNEARCIULIandDAVIDMALLARD

AppliedPsycholinguistics/Volume33/Issue01/January2012,pp8395DOI:10.1017/S0142716411000117,Publishedonline:07April2011

Linktothisarticle:http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0142716411000117

Howtocitethisarticle:GINAVILLAR,JOANNEARCIULIandDAVIDMALLARD(2012).Useofuminthedeceptivespeechofaconvictedmurderer.AppliedPsycholinguistics,33,pp8395doi:10.1017/S0142716411000117

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Applied Psycholinguistics 33 (2012), 8395doi:10.1017/S0142716411000117

Use of um in the deceptive speechof a convicted murderer

GINA VILLARUniversity of Sydney and Charles Sturt UniversityJOANNE ARCIULIUniversity of SydneyDAVID MALLARDCharles Sturt University

Received: November 10, 2009 Accepted for publication: July 11, 2010

ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCEGina Villar, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, 75 East Street, Lidcombe, NSW 2141,Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACTPrevious studies have demonstrated a link between language behaviors and deception; however, ques-tions remain about the role of specific linguistic cues, especially in real-life high-stakes lies. This studyinvestigated use of the so-called filler, um, in externally verifiable truthful versus deceptive speechof a convicted murderer. The data revealed significantly fewer instances of um in deceptive speech.These results are in line with our recent study of um in laboratory elicited low-stakes lies. Ratherthan constituting a filled pause or speech disfluency, um may have a lexical status similar to otherEnglish words and may be under the strategic control of the speaker. In an attempt to successfullydeceive, humans may alter their speech, perhaps in order to avoid certain language behaviors that theythink might give them away.

It is widely accepted that lying produces systematic changes in behavior on thepart of the sender of the lie; however, people generally perform at chance or onlyslightly above chance when attempting to distinguish between truthful and decep-tive behavior in others (Bond & DePaulo, 2006). This level of performance extendsto those who routinely make veracity judgments as part of their professional role(Vrij, 2004). It seems that people have a tendency to rely on cognitive heuris-tics (Levine & McCornack, 2001), overestimate dispositional factors (OSullivan,2003), overestimate nonverbal cues (Vrij, 2008), and generally attend to incorrectcues (Akehurst, Kohnken, Vrij, & Bull, 1996; Mann, Vrij, & Bull, 2004). There-fore, research efforts have focused on identifying objectively quantifiable cuesthat discriminate between truth and deception, independent of the human observer(Zhou, Burgoon, Nunamaker, & Twitchell, 2004). Cambridge University Press 2011 0142-7164/11 $15.00

Applied Psycholinguistics 33:1 84Villar et al.: Use of um in the deceptive speech of a convicted murderer

Language behaviors show great potential in this endeavor as they draw onprocesses that have been associated with deception including working memory,attention, motivation, and impression management (e.g., Burgoon & Floyd, 2000;Zuckerman, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1981). In the current study we focused on onelanguage behavior in particular, the use of the so-called filler um in real-lifehigh-stakes lies. We analyzed the truthful and deceptive language of a convictedmurderer, Scott Peterson, by examining speech which he produced in two dif-ferent contexts: when speaking with suspicious and unfamiliar person/s (formalmedia interviews) and when speaking with a supposedly naive but familiar person(personal telephone conversations with a mistress, Amber Frey). This study aug-ments our recent study (Arciuli, Mallard, & Villar, 2010) where we examined thediscriminative ability of um in laboratory elicited low-stakes lies versus truth.

THE DISCRIMINATIVE UTILITY OF UMAs discussed by Arciuli et al. (2010), there are two possibilities regarding thediscriminative utility of um. One hypothesis predicts more frequent use of umduring deception when compared with truthful speech. The alternative hypothesispredicts less frequent use of um during deceptive speech.

It has often been argued that utterances such as um, ah, and mm constitutefilled pauses (e.g., Maclay & Osgood, 1959) or errors that produce disfluent speech(Chomsky, 1965; Goldman-Eisler, 1968). Disfluencies are ubiquitous in spokenlanguage and although there is substantial variation between individuals, thereis evidence to suggest that up to 6% of language may be considered disfluent(Fox Tree, 1995). It has been suggested that the association between disfluencyand deception operates via increased arousal (i.e., in response to anxiety) and/orcognitive load that often occurs during lying (e.g., Vrij, Edward, Roberts, & Bull,2000). According to such a view, increased use of um during deceptive speechdoes not reflect strategic processes on the part of the deceiver per se, but is abyproduct of the increased emotional and cognitive effort associated with self-regulatory behaviors during the construction and execution of a lie.

Alternatively, less frequent use of um in deceptive speech might reflect adeliberate attempt to evade detection, particularly within the framework of in-terpersonal communications. Certainly, there is a folk belief that instances ofum indicate production problems (Fox Tree, 2007) that are strongly associatedwith deceptive behavior (DePaulo, Rosenthal, Rosenkrantz, & Green, 1982; Vrij,Edward, & Bull, 2001); hence, deceivers may seek to control their use of theseutterances to improve credibility (Akehurst et al., 1996). Central to this hypothesisis the view that liars are able to strategically monitor their deceptive behaviors inan attempt to conceal leakage of cues (Johnson, Henkell, Simon, & Zhu, 2008).Of relevance here is the claim that um may not be accurately conceptualized asa speech disturbance but may instead have lexical status similar to other Englishwords (Clark & Fox Tree, 2002). Presumably, lexical status would enable a higherdegree of strategic control over the production of such utterances. It has beendemonstrated that speech content is easier to control than nonverbal behaviorduring deception (DePaulo & Kirkendol, 1989). In studies unrelated to deception,


speakers can and do successfully reduce their usage of um through consciouscontrol (Clark & Fox Tree, 2002; Kowal et al., 1997).

THE IMPORTANCE OF EXAMINING UM AS ASTAND-ALONE VARIABLEOf importance, um and other types of utterances such as uh may serve diver-gent communicative functions. For instance, Smith and Clark (1993) proposed thatum and uh differ from each other in the length of the delay they signal, perhapsin order to better inform the listener of subsequent information. Specifically, umsignals a long delay and uh signals a short delay. Furthermore, um tends tooccur more frequently at the beginning of a sentence and is used more often whenadditional delays are anticipated. Thus, despite the common perception that um,uh, and other such utterances are interchangeable in that they serve the samefunction, they may not be. In the deception literature, um has almost alwaysbeen operationalized in combination with other utterances such as uh, er, andmmh.

In a study unrelated to deception, the work of Kasl and Mahl (1965) appears to bethe genesis for this particular taxonomy. In their study of the relationship betweenspeech hesitations and anxiety, Kasl and Mahl claimed that um, eh, and erare variants of ah. They combined these utterances to form a single variable theylabeled ah disturbances (p. 426). In contrast, they labeled sentence changes,repetitions, stutters, tongue slips, sentence incompletions, word omissions, andincoherent sounds as non-ah speech disturbances (p. 430). In the deceptionliterature there are a number of references to this particular taxonomy and itappears to have been widely applied in the investigation of speech disfluenciesand pauses (e.g., Bond, 2008; Bond, Kahler, & Paulicelli, 1984; DePaulo et al.,1982; DePaulo et al., 2003; Kraut, 1978; Kraut & Poe, 1980; Riggio & Friedman,1983; Vrij, Akehurst, Soukara, & Bull, 2004; Vrij et al., 2000; Vrij & Mann, 2001).Consequently, the grouping of ah, er, mmh, and um together has beenroutinely accepted in the deception literature and perpetuated from study to study.However, during the past five decades the field of psycholinguistics has producedsome important findings regarding the role of so-called fillers such as um. As aresult, some of the assumptions in the work of Kasl and Mahl may benefit froma reappraisal in light of this contemporary knowledge. We contend that groupingah, er, mmh, and um together may be obscuring the discriminative abilityof um where deceptive language is concerned.

To illustrate, consider three studies that have examined um in real-life high-stakes lying (Davis, Markus, Walters, Vorus, & Connors, 2005; Mann, Vrij, & Bull,2002; Vrij & Mann, 2001). Vrij and Mann (2001), in their study of a convictedmurderer who later confessed to the crime, found no significant difference in thefrequency of what they labeled uh disturbances: frequency of saying uh ormmm between words (p. 192). It is unclear whether um was also included asan uh disturbance. In a subsequent study, in which Mann et al. (2002) examinedthe verbal and nonverbal behavior of 16 suspects during police interviews, ummay have been included in a broader category labeled speech disturbances:frequency of saying ah or mmm, etc. between words, frequency of word


and/or sentence repetition, sentence change, sentence incompletion, stutters etc.(p. 370). Mann et al. (2002) found no significant differences between lying andtruth telling on this variable. Similarly, Davis et al. (2005) grouped um with uhs,sighs, gutturals (p. 691) under the heading of nonlexical sounds. This variablewas positively associated with truthful utterances. The authors suggested that thediscriminative ability of these nonlexical sounds may have emerged in this studybecause, unlike previous studies, these sounds had been measured separately fromother forms of speech disturbance (p. 700), such as word/phrase repetition,sentence incompletion, stutters and so on. They recommend that, in future studies,ums, uhs, sighs, and gutturals be measured together as a separate variablefrom other speech disturbances. We posit that um be measured independently.

To further illustrate, consider two frequently cited meta-analyses of cues todeception (DePaulo et al., 2003; Sporer & Schwandt, 2006). In the first of these,DePaulo et al. (2003) examined 14 studies to conclude that the fluency cate-gory of filled pauses (defined as utterances such as ah, um, er, uh, andhmmm, p. 114) is not a reliable indicator of deception. However, several ofthose studies did not specify whether um was included in their analysis (Bondet al., 1985; Bond, Omar, Mahmoud, & Bonser, 1990; Cody, Lee, & Chao, 1989;Hocking & Leathers, 1980; Riggio & Friedman, 1983; Vrij, 1995; Vrij & Heaven,1999; Vrij & Winkel, 1990). Of the remaining studies that did specify the inclusionof um, it formed part of a composite variable with other so-called fillers such asuh, er, mmh, and occasionally with sighs, guttural sounds, false starts, andthe like (DePaulo et al., 1982; Feeley & deTurck, 1998; Knapp, Hart, & Dennis,1974; Miller, DeTurck, & Kalbfleisch, 1983; Porter & Yuille, 1996). None of thestudies in this meta-analysis included a measure of um as a variable in its ownright.

In the second meta-analysis Sporer and Schwandt (2006) examined 35 studiesand quantitatively summarized the results of 121 estimates of so-called paraver-bal cues to deception. These cues included filled and unfilled pauses, messageduration, number of words, pitch, repetitions, response latency, speech errors andspeech rate. In this meta-analysis, um was included in the category of filledpause, along with speech disturbances such as uh, er . . . ah, etc. (p. 424).Like DePaulo et al. (2003), Sporer and Schwandt concluded that filled pauses arenot reliable indicators of deception. However, only 5 of the 35 studies (DePauloet al., 1982; Ebesu & Miller, 1994; Knapp et al., 1974; Kraut, 1978; Vrij &Winkel, 1991) examined filled pauses and none of these measured um asa variable in its own right. Once again, the effects for um may have beenobscured.

A search of the deception literature between the years of 1994 and 2009,using data-bases from a range of disciplines including psychology, linguistics,and computer sciences, revealed that only two published studies (Arciuli et al.,2010; Benus, Enos, Hirschber, & Shriberg, 2006) have measured um as a variableseparate from the others with which it is commonly grouped. The findings from ourlaboratory based study, in addition to the findings of Benus et al. (2006), suggestthat when um is measured independently of other variables, its increased usageis associated with truth relative to lies. However, both of these studies examinedonly low-stakes lies. Because of the practical and ethical difficulties associated


with investigating real-life high-stakes lies, few studies have been able to providecomparative data to demonstrate that the same patterns of behavior are seen acrossa variety of types of lies. Several authors have noted that cues to deception may bemoderated by how motivated the deceiver is to evade detection and it is possiblethat the indicators of deceit that are observed in low-stakes lies will be different tothose observed in high-stakes lies (e.g., Burgoon & Floyd, 2000; DePaulo et al.,2003; Hancock, Curry, Goorha, & Woodworth, 2008).

In summary, operationalizing um in combination with other variables mayobscure the discriminative utility of this variable. The present research was de-signed as a companion study for our recent investigation of the use of um duringlow-stakes lies, in order to further explore the discriminative ability of um inthe real-life high-stakes lies of a convicted murderer.

PREDICTIONS OF THE CURRENT STUDYBecause our recent research revealed significantly decreased use of um duringdeception in laboratory elicited lies (Arciuli et al., 2010), we expected that ummight be observed less frequently in Petersons deceptive language, although itwas an open empirical question as to whether patterns seen in low-stakes lieswould also be seen in high-stakes lies. Given the ubiquitous nature of um ineveryday language, we predicted that any discriminative utility of um would beapparent in both Petersons private telephone conversations with his mistress (i.e.,the Frey Tapes) and his media interviews.

METHODDesignIt is a nontrivial task to establish ground truth in research that is conductedusing real-life high-stakes lies that were elicited outside of the laboratory. In thecurrent study, in order to establish which stimuli are truthful and which werenot, determinations of veracity were not based on verdict. We instead includedonly those utterances that could be firmly established as either truth or lie byindependent information.

First, it was necessary to separate the data into two subsets for separate analysis(Frey Tapes and Media Interviews) because the production contexts may havediffered in several ways. For instance, it may be a more complex task to attemptto successfully evade detection in the audiovisual modality (television interviews)compared with the audio modality alone (taped phone calls). Specifically, ontelevision both verbal and nonverbal behavior is on display. Second, it is notknown whether Scott Peterson may have prepared more for the televised interviewscompared with the telephone conversations. There is some suggestion that Petersonemployed a media consultant to coach him in preparation for his public televisionappearances. As a result, some of his responses may have been partially scriptedor rehearsed and, depending upon the questions Peterson anticipated being asked,this may have impacted upon the cues to deception that were observed. Third,the target of the deception (his mistress Amber Frey versus interviewer/millions


of viewers) and the subsequent interpersonal use of language may have differedbetween contexts. Fourth, the content differed somewhat between productioncontexts.

ParticipantWe analyzed the speech of Scott Lee Peterson, a North American Caucasianmale with no prior convictions who was arrested in April 2003 for the murder ofhis pregnant wife, Laci Peterson, who disappeared from their home in ModestoCalifornia on Christmas Eve 2002. Peterson was subsequently charged, convicted,and sentenced to death under the California Penal Code for the double murder of hiswife and their unborn son in 2004. Peterson was born in San Diego, California, onOctober 24, 1972. English is his first language and his highest level of academicachievement is a university degree in agricultural business. Prior to Petersonsarrest he was employed as a fertilizer salesman.

Case detailsWhen Scott Peterson reported Laci Peterson missing on December 24, 2002, the27-year-old was due to deliver her first child, to be named Conner, 6 weeks later.Peterson was first interviewed by police on the day of Lacis disappearance andthen on several further occasions as the search for Laci continued. Search warrantshad been issued on his home, vehicles, and place of business and he was underpolice surveillance from early January 2003. Although Peterson told police in hisfirst interview that he was not involved with another woman, 6 days after Laciwas reported missing, a woman by the name of Amber Frey contacted police tosay she had been having a romantic relationship with Peterson for several weekssince November 19, 2002. She claimed that during that time Peterson had lied toher about his real circumstances by presenting the guise of a recently bereavedwidower living in Sacramento, who traveled routinely for business. Frey claimsshe had only been told of his real identity on the day of her contact with police bya friend who recognized Peterson from news reports.

Frey agreed to cooperate with police by secretly taping her telephone conver-sations with Peterson from December 31 and he continued to call Frey followingthe disappearance of his wife. During this time, Peterson repeatedly denied topolice that he had been having a relationship with a woman other than his wife,even when he was eventually confronted with a photograph of Frey. At this point,Peterson told Frey he had lied to her about his circumstances and confessedto her about the search for his missing pregnant wife. Their affair became publicknowledge on January 24, 2003, when Frey made a statement at a news conferenceorchestrated by the police. In response to the heated public response to Petersonsrelationship with Frey, Peterson conducted four televised media interviews fromJanuary 2729, 2003, during which he was later found to have lied on at least oneoccasion.

On April 18, 2003, Scott Peterson was arrested by police for the murders of hiswife and unborn child following the discovery of the bodies of Laci and Connor onthe shores of San Francisco Bay on March 12. The case went to trial in June 2004,


where Peterson pled not guilty of the charges5 months later the jury found himguilty of murder in the first degree for his wife and murder in the second degreefor his unborn son.

MaterialsTranscripts of four televised media interviews in which Peterson spoke about hiswifes disappearance (each between 20- and 30-min duration) and approximately11 hr of taped telephone conversations between Peterson and his mistress AmberFrey (recorded over a period of 5 weeks), all of which were admitted as evidence attrial, formed the data for this study. Peterson did not actually testify at his own trial,so there were no samples of testimony speech data for examination. However, thetrial transcript itself was still required in the analysis for verification purposes: itwas used to isolate segments in Petersons speech that were subsequently identifiedas truth or lie at trial.

ProcedureA single person coded the data using the procedures outlined in our earlier paper(Arciuli et al., 2010). Prior to analysis of the speech data, each of the transcripts wascompared to the original audio of the interviews (where these were available) andtelephone conversations to ensure they were a complete and accurate record of theinterviews. Consistent with the methodology used by Vrij and Mann (2001), Mannet al. (2002), and Davis et al. (2005), portions of each interview and telephoneconversation that could be verified as being truth or lie, were identified in the data.This involved a meticulous reading of each of the media and wiretap transcriptsto isolate any utterances that could be strongly supported, by evidence presentedat trial or from another reputable source, as either truthful or deceptive. Deceptiveutterances were identified as those samples of speech where information wasmanufactured, hidden, or manipulated.

Consistent with the methodology originally employed by Mann et al. (2002),fragments were isolated so as to ensure any uncorroborated material or topicchanges were excluded. Consequently, fragments were of varying length andindependent of sentence structure to some extent. The majority of speech dataavailable in the interviews were discarded because there was no way of corrobo-rating it as truth or lie. For instance, it is impossible to verify Petersons thoughtsor personal opinions. One example of this is when Peterson responds to a questionby the media interviewer Diane Sawyer who asked Peterson why his mistress,Amber Frey, came forward to provide the police with information about theirrelationship. Peterson responds, Its the appropriate thing to do. It really showswhat a person of character she is, um and it allows us to um get back to looking forLaci. Clearly, this segment must be discarded because we cannot know whetherthis was Petersons true opinion.

Each sample was coded for the presence of the target variable um usingWmatrix (Rayson, 2008), a Web-based interface tool for linguistic analysis ofEnglish text that generates word frequency profiles from a concordance of each


Table 1. Examples of deceptive and truthful utterances in each condition

Media Interviews Frey Tapes

Truthful utterance They [Lacis family] areobviously um upset with meabout the um the romantic umrelationship with Amber umand they have little trust astheyve expressed in the mediato date um but I believe thattheyre still looking for Laci.

Um well Ill just Ill just tellyou. Uh you havent beenwatching the newsobviously. Um I have notbeen travelling during thelast couple weeks. I have, Ihave lied to you that Ivebeen travelling. The girlIm married to, her name isLaci. She disappeared justbefore Christmas.

Deceptive utterance It was a couple of days afterLacis disappearance, Itelephoned her [Amber] andtold her the truth.

Ill call when its my nighttime. About nine hoursdifference. Ill take the trainlate tonight from here toBrussels. And then Ill be inBrussels for at least fourdays.

sample. The presence of um in each of the four conditions was calculated as apercentage of the total number of words per sample.

RESULTSThe sample sizes of each of the four conditions (measured as the total numberof words per condition) differed: 180 words for the media interviews/deceptioncondition, 690 words for the media interviews/truth condition, 840 words for theFrey tapes/deception condition, and 1,018 words for the Frey tapes/truth condition.Table 1 provides examples of speech from each condition.

To test the discriminative utility of um, word frequency profiles were gener-ated for each sample and analysed using the log likelihood ratio (LR) test. LR inthe present study refers to the logarithm of the ratio between the likelihood that thetruthful and deceptive speech inputs from the participant have the same linguisticprofile and the likelihood that the linguistic profiles differ from each other. LR isless likely to overestimate significance than traditional statistical tests such as zratios that rely upon assumptions of a normal distribution. Of particular relevanceto the present study, LR has the added benefit of being suitable for comparison oftexts of differing lengths (Dunning, 1993; Rayson, Berridge, & Francis, 2004).

The frequency of um as a percentage of the total number of words in eachof the four conditions, including confidence intervals as an indication of the truerange in which the effect is likely to occur, is shown in Table 2.

The critical value for LR () at an alpha level of .05 was calculated at 3.84. Loglinear comparisons of the presence of um revealed there was a significant main


Table 2. Frequency of um as a function of veracity

Media Interviews Frey Tapes

Truth (CI) Deception (CI) Truth (CI) Deception (CI)

Percentageof ums 5.22 (3.74, 6.70) 1.11 (0.41, 1.81) 3.93 (3.05, 4.81) 0.12 (0.00, 0.28)

Note: CI, 95% confidence interval.

effect of veracity, with lying accompanied by fewer ums (0.25%) compared toduring truth telling (7.45%; = 108.89, df = 1, p = .000). The main effect ofspeech production modality was not significant, with only marginally more umsappearing during the media interviews (4.37%) than during the Frey tapes (4.25%)(= 0.02, df= 1, p= .89). There was no significant interaction between veracityand speech production conditions ( = 0.10, df = 1, p = .75).

DISCUSSIONHumans are ineffective lie detectors. Thus, researchers have focused their attentionon identifying objective quantifiable cues to deception. There is a growing body ofevidence suggesting a link between language and deceptive behaviors (Newman,Pennebaker, Berry, & Richards, 2003; Zhou et al., 2004), although questionsremain regarding the nature and role of particular linguistic cues, especially inreal-life high-stakes circumstances. We analyzed the use of um in the truthfuland deceptive speech of a convicted murderer in two different production contexts(media interviews vs. personal telephone conversations).

There are two possibilities regarding the use of um. One hypothesis predictsmore frequent use of um during deceptive compared to truthful speech, possiblyin response to speech-planning problems associated with the additional emotionaland/or cognitive processing demands generated by lying (e.g., Vrij et al., 2000).The alternative hypothesis predicts less frequent use of um during deceptivespeech, possibly because the sender attempts to strategically plan and monitorthe content of the message to prevent such interjections (e.g., Johnson et al.,2008). The findings of the current study supported the latter hypothesis with umobserved less frequently in deceptive compared with truthful speech. This effectwas observed in both production contexts of informal telephone conversationsand more formal media interviews. Overall, these results are in line with ourrecent study examining low-stakes laboratory elicited lies relative to truth (Arciuliet al., 2010), which demonstrated that the increased use of um is negativelyassociated with deception.

There is a folk belief that um is a marker of uncertainty and, particularly,of deceptive behavior. Thus, its reduced usage during deceptive speech may in-dicate that the speaker is attempting to control the frequency of um in orderto appear more credible. Data from the present study emphasize the strategicnature of deceptive behavior. Furthermore, our findings suggest that rather than


representing a speech error or disfluency, um may be more accurately viewed asa word (such as an interjection), used thoughtfully and purposefully, and under thestrategic control of the speaker. It would be valuable for future studies to considerwhether um should indeed be (re)conceptualized as a lexical term, with all theaccompanying lexical properties of phonology, prosody, syntax, semantics, andpragmatics.

Note that the effects observed here, although striking from a statistical view-point, are rather subtle from the perspective of the human observer. However, umoffers the key advantage of being well suited to automatic parsing of transcribedspeech (as just like any other word um can be identified and counted usingbasic concordance systems). Thus, once transcribed, um can be systematicallyand objectively identified and tracked, for later comparison with baseline speechsamples from the same individual.

There are some limitations associated with the current study that are specific tothe case itself, and also speak to the methodological challenges implicit in researchon real-life lies. Within the media interviews, it is unclear whether there were anypractice effects from interview to interview; however, there is research to suggestthat contrary to commonly held beliefs by forensic investigators, verbal cuesto deception may remain fairly stable over repeated interrogations (Granhag &Stromwall, 2002). In addition, there are temporal issues to consider in this datathe telephone conversation speech data span a 4-week period and the interview dataspan a 2-day period. Last, it is acknowledged that a single-case design has somedisadvantages, namely, in terms of generalizability to other persons. However, thecurrent research is intended as a companion study for our recent laboratory study(Arciuli et al., 2010). Moreover, reporting on case studies is a long and well-accepted tradition, a method that provides rich contextual information, which mayotherwise be obscured in large group comparison designs (Yin, 2003). Importantfindings have emerged in psycholinguistics using this methodology (e.g., theseminal work of Garrard, Maloney, Hodges, & Patterson, 2005, that revealedlinguistic markers of cognitive decline in dementia). Case studies such as thepresent one provide the unique opportunity to investigate real-life high-stakeslies elicited from circumstances that are ethically and practically impossible tosimulate in the laboratory.

It is well accepted that there are linguistic behaviors that mark the likelihood ofthe presence of deception. The current study demonstrates in a real-world forensiccontext the discriminative ability of the use of um. The results suggest that inan attempt to successfully deceive, humans may strategically alter their linguisticbehavior. Furthermore, these findings suggest that a (re)conceptualization of umas a lexical term that is under the control of the speaker, as opposed to an unplannedspeech error or filler, warrants further investigation.

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