Limitations to the detection of deception: True and false recollections are poorly distinguished using an event-related potential procedure

The utility of using indices of neural function to identify deception relies on finding highly reliable and valid approaches that adequately identify the guilty and exonerate the innocent. A class of approaches, based on the guilty knowledge technique (GKT), assume that guilty individuals will recognize specific crime-relevant details, whereas innocent individuals will not. Memory distortions, however, may limit the accuracy of such procedures. To investigate these limits, two studies were conducted to examine whether brain electrical activity could differentiate true from false recollections elicited by the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. The design of each study maximized the opportunity of finding electrocortical differences between true and false recognition. Each study found very high rates of false recognition, with little evidence that brain electrical activity could differentiate true from false memories. Results suggested that under certain conditions both true and false recollections can produce a pattern of brain activity indicative of recognition.