Differentiation of deception using pupillary responses as an index of cognitive processing

The deception literature has predominantly focused on detection of guilty individuals using electrodermal measures. Little research has examined other psychophysiological measures or the mechanisms underlying deception. Therefore, the present study examined pupillary responses in a differentiation-of-deception paradigm. Twenty-four undergraduate participants answered the same questions twice, once truthfully and once deceptively, while pupillary responses were recorded. Questions were based on recently learned (episodic) information from scenarios or on general (semantic) knowledge from long-term memory. Task-evoked pupil dilation was significantly greater when participants confabulated responses than when they told the truth for both episodic and semantic memory questions. Previous research has demonstrated that pupil size increases with increased cognitive processing load. The present study suggested that generating deceptive recall was associated with increased pupil size and required greater cognitive processing than truthful recall.