Silent Talker Lie Detector
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The Silent Talker Lie Detector is an attempt to increase the accuracy of the most common lie detector, the polygraph, which does not directly measure whether the subject is truthful, but records physiological measures that are associated with emotional responses. The Silent Talker gives the evaluator access to viewing microexpressions by adding a camera to the process. The creators claim that microexpressions are actual indicators of lying, while many other things could cause an emotional response. Since microexpressions are fleeting, the camera allows the examiner to capture data that otherwise would have been missed. However, the scientific community is not convinced that this system accomplishes what it claims and some call it pseudoscience.
The Silent Talker is a camera system which observes and analyzes nonverbal communication in the form of microexpression while a subject is being interviewed, and is marketed as a tool for credibility assessment. Silent Talker was invented between 2000 and 2002 by a team at Manchester Metropolitan University.[1] The system claims to avoid numerous problems with previous lie detection devices by using an artificial neural network.[2]
Polygraphs are used under the hypothesis that most people do not lie or deceive without some feelings of anxiety or nervousness. This stems from the idea that most people either feel bad that they are lying or are afraid that they will get caught or will be in trouble if they lie. It is this fear and guilt that produces the anxiety and nervousness. When a person feels this way they exhibit difficult to detect involuntary physiological changes that can be detected with a polygraph. Most polygraph examiners will say that they do not test specifically for lies, but for these deceptive reactions. The Silent Talker camera allows the examiner to add microexpressions that may be more directly associated with actual lying. And, since microexpressions are more difficult for the subject to control, theoretically they could provide the examiner with better data.
Polygraph examination results are not generally court admissible because they are considered fundamentally unreliable and there is a fear that jurors would, without question, believe all results of a polygraph."[3]