RECURRENCE QUANTIFICATION ANALYSIS OF ELECTROOCULOGRAPHY SIGNAL TO A CONTROL QUESTION TEST: A NEW APPROACH FOR THE DETECTION OF DECEPTION

This study aimed to evaluate a lie-detection system by nonlinear analysis of electrooculography (EOG) signals in the polygraph test. The physiological signals such as photoplethysmography signal, electrodermal response, respiratory changes as well as EOG signal were recorded based on a Control Question Test (CQT). Three psychophysiological signals were evaluated based on the extracted features in the seven-position numerical scoring. The dynamics of EOG signals in subjects that had a total negative score were analyzed by recurrence quantification analysis (RQA). The six values of RQA were calculated to analyze the EOG signals in relevant questions compared to other questions. A one-way ANOVA with multiple comparisons was performed to evaluate the extracted variables in different questions. Eleven subjects had a total score of [Formula: see text]2 and less, so the EOG signals of these subjects were evaluated. Recurrence plots (RPs) of EOG signals showed clear differences in the two types of questions. The recurrence quantification analysis of vertical EOG signal indicated that [Formula: see text] and determinism (DET) values decreased significantly for relevant questions compared to other questions. Moreover, a significant decrease was observed in all RQA parameters except RR for the horizontal EOG signal. The differences of EOG signals in relevant questions observed using RPs and RQA were possibly related to the underlying changes in rapid eye movement due to the stress. The results of this study illustrate that the RQA technique is well suited to analyze the EOG signals in the detection of deception.

Second Amendment and the Gun-Control Controversies: A Flaw in Constitutional Framing and an Antinomy of American Conservatism

This article is a critical input to the national and international debate on Gun Control and the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution since 1791. Auspiciously, the paper interrogates the historical, ideological, and socio-cultural roots of the Gun Rights from Medieval Europe to modern America as well as its implications for homeland security in 21st Century American society. The whole legalistic, philosophical and socio-cultural rationale for and against the Gun Control Question in mainstream American politics elicits many questions: Why has it been legislatively infeasible to address the frailties inherent in the 2nd Amendment texts? Is the Second Amendment immutable amid post-1791 realities? Has morality lost its place in American politics? Was the rights prescribed under 2nd Amendment vested on the individuals as construed impliedly or on the people as expressly stipulated in the constitution? And why has America with the most sophisticated military and intelligence architecture in the world failed to demonstrate the capability to contain sectarian killings in the land? The paper submits that the Gun Control Debate lays bare, one of the internal cleavages within the American political and social system, a nation so admired not just by her military, economic and diplomatic clout but also by the valued she stresses and defend world over: freedom, justice, equality and global peace, ideals for which the United States supplanted pax-Britanica for Pax-Americana. The appalling antecedents of gun killings in America knows no rank with 11 presidential assassination attempts for which four American presidents died: Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881); William McKinley (1901) John F Kennedy (1963) with Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan seriously injured in the 1912 and 1981 assassination attempts. The quartet presidential assassins: John Wilkes Booth; Charles J. Guiteau; Leon Czolgosz and Lee Harvey Oswald were all some of the first high profile abusers of the 2nd Amendment and the gun rights it granted. The death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X among many also resonates one of the foundational flaws of a nation globally reputed as the policeman of the earth. When will this trend ever end?.Millions have gone yet there seems to be hyper-partisanship about the Gun Control Question. This political cleavage represents a failure of the present generation of the political elites, the people and the American institutions to rise above and repeal the frailty of the 2nd Amendment, couched in one of the most nebulous languages in constitutional framings since the first ten Amendment to the world’s first-ever written constitution was ratified on 15 December 1791.The lessons from the government response to the Gun Question never placed America as a society developing societies should aspire to become, it is totally antithetical to the admirable values known about the greatest nation since the collapse of Nazism, Fascism and in the last decade of the 20th Century Communism for which in the submissions of Francis Fukuyama, Liberal Democracy became the Last Man metaphorically outlasting all other contending ideological contemporaries thus: “The End History”. The moral, spiritual, political leaders of America must converge on one front on the Gun Question, the Republicans must not hide under conservative garb and watch the blood of innocent generation of Americans been wasted by abusers of the Second Amendment. The appropriate measures to put a permanent lid on the mindless gun-related deaths must be carried out. The Democrats must forge a bipartisan consensus to arrest the moral drift in the land under the guise of the 2nd Amendment’s immutability clause: “shall not be infringed upon”. American political leaders must not under whatever guise send the wrong signal to the international community that will characterize the state as a policeman that cannot police his home, Charity begins at home, it is contradictory, antithetical and undermined every value upon which America prides herself under the rubric Pax-Americana. Historical antecedents show that the National Rifle Association is a shadow of itself, haven being skewed from its original goal to promote martial qualities and marksmanship to a lobbyist group without conscience for humanity. The American Institutions must live up to their mandate to tame the sinister and overbearing influence of the group. To the political leaders of the land the patriots of the 1775 Revolution fought for a land of the free it is your bounden duty to ensure their labor never be in vain: Lincoln was conscious of this during the heady days as was Andrew John who put their differences aside to restore national psyche, President Trump must not trade the blood of the children of America with his 2020 presidential re-election ambition as the NRA pro-Trump for 2020 billboards suggests. The Gun-Control debates further lays bare one of the antinomies of American Conservatism “being pro-life, anti-abortion and at the same time, pro-gun” as the abuses and defense of the 2nd Amendment represent one of the Ideological conspiracies against under the garb of Classical Liberalism propagated by contemporary votaries of American conservatism.

MEDICIÓN PSICOFISIOLÓGICA: ANALISIS DE ESTRÉS DE VOZ EN CREDIBILIDAD DE TESTIMONIO EN INTERNOS DEL CE.RE.SO. DE TEKAX, YUCATÁN

En el presente trabajo se empleó el equipo de Análisis de Estrés de Voz (VSA; por sus siglas en ingles) para la evaluación de la credibilidad de testimonio en una muestra de 24 internos del Centro de Reinserción Social de Tekax, Yucatán; los cuales se encuentran internados por haber cometido uno de los siguientes delitos: violación, homicidio y robo.El diseño de este estudio fue cuasi-experimental con ciego simple. Se dividió a los participantes en un grupo experimental y un grupo control. Se aplicó una entrevista de tipo Control Question Test usando el equipo Digital Voice Stress Analyzer (DVSA) para registrar las respuestas antes las preguntas del cuestionario (Damphouse, Pointon, Upchurch, Moore, 2007) y posteriormente evaluar la credibilidad de los sujetos en las respuestas que dieron. Después un investigador que participó en ninguna fase anterior del estudio, interpretó los resultados obtenidos del DVSA e hizo la evaluación de credibilidad de las respuestas de los sujetos identificándolos como Deshonestos o No Deshonestos. Por último se cotejó las interpretaciones realizadas con las instrucciones dadas a cada participante.Del total de la muestra, 24 sujetos, 11 pertenecían al grupo experimental y 12 al grupo control, ocho sujetos habían cometido el delito de robo, ocho sujetos el delito de violación y ocho sujetos el delito de homicidio (uno de los participantes en la categoría de homicidio, no quedo dentro de la muestra utilizable pues aun cuando siguió las instrucciones correctamente la grabación de la entrevista no se hizo correctamente)Se encontró que un mayor porcentaje de la población (34.8%) fue catalogada correctamente como No Deshonestos; 26.1% de la población fue catalogada correctamente como Deshonestos; otro 21.7 % de la población fue catalogada incorrectamente como No Deshonestos, por último 17.4% de la población fue identificada incorrectamente como Deshonestos. El porcentaje total de la población identificada correctamente ya sea como honestos o deshonestos fue el 60.87%, mientras que un 39.13% de la población fue identificada incorrectamente como honesto o deshonesto.Se concluye que más de la mitad de las interpretaciones sobre la honestidad o deshonestidad de las respuestas fueron acertadas, identificando correctamente a los sujetos cuando respondían con la verdad o mintiendo.Para finalizar no se encontró relación entre las puntuaciones obtenidas en las escalas: Narcisismo, Deseabilidad Social y Paranoide del Millon-III con los resultados de las evaluaciones de credibilidad, el porcentaje de sujetos evaluados correctamente, Verdaderos positivos o falsos, fue de 57.15% y el porcentaje de sujetos evaluados incorrectamente como Falsos positivos o Falsos Negativos fue del 42.85%; se puede concluir que el uso del VSA para analizar la credibilidad de testimonio con personas con características de personalidad Paranoide, Narcisista o de alta Deseabilidad Social tendrá resultados confiables, se puede concluir que estas características de personalidad en hombres internos no afectan la eficacia del equipo para identificar correctamente cuando los individuos son honestos o deshonestos en sus respuestas.

Evaluation of Learning Outcomes Through Multiple Choice Pre- and Post-Training Assessments

Training programs, in industry, are a common way to increase awareness and change the behavior of individuals. The most popular way to determine the effectiveness of the training on learning outcomes is to administer assessments with Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) to the participants, despite the fact that in this type of assessment it is difficult to separate true learning from guessing. This study specifically aims to quantify the effect of the inclusion of the ‘I don’t know’ (IDK) option on learning outcomes in a pre-/post-test assessment construct by introducing a ‘Control Question’ (CQ). The analysis was performed on training conducted for 1,474 participants. Results show a statistically significant reduction in the usage of the IDK option in the post-test assessment as compared to the pre-test assessment for all questions including the Control Question. This illustrates that participants are learning concepts taught in the training sessions but are also prone to guess more in the post-test assessment as compared to the pre-test assessment.

Detecting Deception: Effect of Auditory and Visual Stimuli on Pupil Dilation

We investigated the effects of auditory and visual stimuli on pupil dilation induced by emotional arousal during deception. The 33 participants were free to select to be in either a guilty or a not-guilty group. The guilty group performed a theft crime mission, and the not-guilty group performed a legal mission. To detect deception, we measured their pupil diameter with an eye tracker, and they completed the Control Question Test that is typically employed in polygraph tests, and which is based on a comparison of physiological responses to crime-relevant questions and comparison questions. This test was presented via one of three stimuli: auditory, visual, or dual sensory (auditory and visual simultaneously). The findings revealed that the diameter of the pupils of the guilty group increased differently according to the question type when both auditory and visual stimuli were presented simultaneously. Results suggest that pupil dilation could be the deception discriminant, and the use of more than one sensory stimulus may support lie detection in forensic investigations.

DEVELOPMENT AND PRECODIFICATION OF A LITHOSPHERE QUESTIONNAIRE AS A TOOL IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH (GEOSCIENCES)

This paper presents the theoretical approach and the technical steps for the development of a questionnaire on lithosphere for the 1st class of Greek junior high school. It, also, discusses the importance and the multifunctional role of such a questionnaire (i.e. GCI tool). Furthermore it presents an innovative precodification of open-ended questions based on the set question - control question, which offers valid data for a qualitative study like this. The cognitional control table offers abundant data about students’ cognitional structure and about whether conceptual change has been achieved.

Vote Overreporting and a Survey Experiment: The Case of the Taiwan National Elections

The misreporting of voter turnout, prevalent in survey data across the world, has received comparatively little attention anywhere apart from in some western countries. This study evaluates the use of questions specifically designed to mitigate the level of vote overreporting for the 2012 national elections in Taiwan. After a theoretical examination of social desirability and memory failure, the two primary causes of misreporting, we present the results of a split-question experiment featuring two questions designed to mitigate overreporting. While the findings reveal that the experiment with changes to the questionnaire context was far from successful because of a low reported turnout for the control question, it is the case that, as hypothesized, reported voter turnout differs vastly among the different questions, with the question mitigating for social desirability resulting in higher figures than that for memory failure.