ABSTRACT
Research on deception detection has exploded since the mid 1990s and it continues to be popular among students and an attractive topic for psycho-legal scholars. An understanding of the cognitive difficulties associated with lying means that an investigator can exploit the differing levels of cognitive load that truth tellers and liars experience. This chapter argues that the use of unanticipated questions and the imposition of cognitive load have direct applicability for practitioners. The gradual and strategic use of evidence disclosure method also enables the interviewer to gauge the level of cooperation of the person being interviewed, without having to confront the person, or telegraphing to the suspect what is known or unknown. Collective interviewing may have potential applications in witness interviews in mass casualty investigations or crisis situations that require numerous witnesses to be quickly interviewed to assess an incident.
