Acoustic Correlates of Deceptive Speech - An Exploratory Study

The current work sets out to enhance our knowledge of changes or lack of changes in the speech signal when people are being deceptive. In particular, the study attempted to investigate the appropriateness of using speech cues in detecting deception. Truthful, deceptive and control speech was elicited from five speakers during an interview setting. The data was subjected to acoustic analysis and results are presented on a range of speech parameters including fundamental frequency (f0), overall intensity and mean vowel formants F1, F2 and F3. A significant correlation could not be established for any of the acoustic features examined. Directions for future work are highlighted.