Linguistic Statement Analysis Technique
by Sergeant Bob Shaffer

Confucius claimed, “The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it.” He knew the benefit of knowing something is the opportunity to share it with others. He couldn’t have been more right. What’s the point of having special knowledge if you can’t tell someone? It’s also the foundation upon which the majority of criminal cases are successfully investigated. Someone does something illegal, tells someone else about it, the information gets passed on until the police or investigator catches wind of it, and the bandit gets caught. It is also the premise upon which the Linguistic Statement Analysis Technique (LSAT) is based.

In 1998, a detective from my department was investigating an alleged sexual assault. The suspect had met the victim in a dance club, taken her to his home, and according to the victim’s statement, forced her to have sex. The detective conducted a thorough, traditional investigation, and was convinced the suspect had committed the crime and had drafted a warrant for his arrest. As an afterthought, she decided to have me examine the suspect and victim’s statements in hopes of gaining some more information that would strengthen her case. It took only a matter of minutes to firmly conclude that this was not a forced sexual assault but consensual sex. I recommended that our detective re-interview the victim, inquiring about the additional information that was revealed in her statement. The victim declined to comment and abruptly withdrew her complaint. Further investigation revealed the victim was divorced and had not had a physical relationship in over three years. When her friends found out she had slept with the man that night, she tried to hide her shame by inventing the rape story. In this case, statement analysis prevented the arrest and potential punishment of an innocent person.

In a 1999 robbery case, analysis of a convenience store clerk’s statement revealed she was not the victim she was claiming to be but was actually part of the robbery plot. Focusing their investigation on the findings of the analysis, detectives found that the robber was actually the clerk’s boyfriend and that they had conspired to stage the robbery.

These are excellent examples of how linguistic statement analysis has been used to conduct investigations with a much higher degree of efficiency and effectiveness. LSAT is described as a process by which a trained analyst examines written or spoken language and is able to determine truthfulness, deception, and gleans significant additional information from it. The LSAT discipline involves using a consistent, systematic process to closely examining the word choice, structure and content of a subject’s statement to determine whether it is the product of a person’s memory or a fabrication from another source. In basic terms, statements that come from memory are truthful and those that come from somewhere other than memory are deceptive. Whether truthful or deceptive, LSAT reveals the reality behind the story, not just the person’s perception or opinion.

In a 1999 study in which police, psychiatrists, Secret Service agents, polygraph examiners, and college students participated, all were shown ten videotapes of people relating either a true or false story. They used the traditional methods of attempting to read body language and rationalizing the activities in the people’s stories. Only two groups of law enforcement officers and a group of clinical psychologists were able to detect deception with a questionably acceptable 69% success rate. However, a 1994 study of the validity of statement analysis in the detection of deception and truthfulness, revealed it to be accurate at a rate of 90%.

LSAT works because people feel compelled for various reasons to share information even if it is incriminating. If they don’t do it openly, their mind will reveal it discretely through spoken and written language. If you’ve ever had a gut feeling that someone isn’t telling you the truth, but you just can’t put your finger on why you feel that way, it is not by accident. The gut feeling is caused by your mind recognizing the same tactics for deception that it has used itself countless times! We can’t escape it because it is hard-wired into all human brains. LSAT is the process by which we can justify our gut feelings by identifying the tactics our minds use to disguise information in our spoken and written communication.

All humans use the same subconscious strategies and tactics to deceive. Our choice of words, phrases, sentence and statement structure, and statement content is significantly different when we are deceptive from when we are truthful. By far, the most common strategy for deception is the omission of sensitive information. This tactic is likened to leaving footprints in the snow. They tell us something used to be there but isn’t any longer. Like a footprint, the deceptive person leaves behind a clue or linguistic signal that tells the analyst they have excluded information. Research in the fields of language, psychology, behavioral science, and deception, has led to the identification of numerous and consistent trends in language that are referred to as linguistic signals. Using LSAT, analysts identify these linguistic signals that differentiate deceptive statements from truthful ones and most often reveal valuable information that the person does not know they have revealed.

Common linguistic signals are specific adverbs and phrases that indicate the person has intentionally left information out of their statement. If someone says, “I went to the store. Later I went home”, they are not telling us how much later or what they did between the two activities. The word “later” is one of many adverbial signals that the person intentionally omitted that information, making it a deception. Other signals include changes in the terminology a person uses to describe the same thing. For instance, someone referring to a “gun” at one point in their statement, might refer to it as a “pistol” somewhere else in the same statement. This subtle change is attributed to changing circumstances during the actual event that affected the person’s perception of that item and subsequently, the terminology. This is a strong indication the person has left out significant information and therefore can be considered deceptive.

Other signals include specific use and misuse of pronouns and certain types of punctuation. When asked what they did the morning of an event, the deceptive person might answer with, “Got up and fed dog. Then went to work.” The statement analyst knows that by omitting the pronouns like “I”, “my”, or “she”, the person has not told us who actually did these things. When this occurs, the likelihood of deception is over 99%. Why do people leave out the pronouns? In many cases, feelings of guilt cause the person to disconnect themselves from the deception. Other times, it is the person’s attempt to conceal someone else’s identity.

Punctuation is one other significant signal. For instance, parentheses tell us the information contained in them is likely to be truthful and lends credibility to a statement. Quotation marks used for words other than quotes tell us the person has a totally different definition of that word. When I say, “I went to ‘work’ yesterday” it might mean I actually went golfing and just thought about work! Other linguistic signals include the calculation of statement segment ratios (the amount of information dedicated to events before, during and after the event), tense, extraneous information, time references, corrections, personalizing the statement and references to emotions.

LSAT is equally effective and useful when applied to suspect, witness, and victim statements alike and is applied in a highly organized, systematic manner. First, the analyst examines the person’s statement to identify all of the existing linguistic signals using an elaborate series of markings, connecting lines and coding. They then determine exactly what specific points of the statement are deceptive or truthful, and reveal much information that the subject didn’t intend to include. Look at an example from a homicide suspect’s statement:

“Before I left home, I went to tell her goodbye. After I said goodbye to her, I left the house to catch my flight.”

To the untrained reader there appears to be nothing out of the ordinary. To the contrary, this segment contains multiple signals that the writer is not only highly likely to have committed the murder but also exactly when he is likely to have committed it. Consider the underlined words and phrases in this segment again:

“Before I left home, I went to tell her goodbye. After I said goodbye to her, I left the house to catch my flight.”

Notice the suspect twice used the word “left”. This particular word is a trend in language that commonly indicates a conflict. It leads the analyst to strongly suspect there was a conflict at the home. Like “later”, the adverb “after” is a sign of omission and indicates the person intentionally removed information from that point in the statement. Next, the suspect repeated describing the action of saying “goodbye”. This corroborates the suspicion that the suspect omitted information at this same place. Also notice that the suspect first describes the action as “telling” goodbye, but later describes it as “saying” goodbye. The difference between telling and saying is that “telling” indicates he received a verbal response, while “saying” is a statement for which there was no response. Is it possible that there was no response to “saying” goodbye because the victim was not able to respond due to her death? Another more subtle signal is the person changing terminology from “home” to “house”. This indicates something happened between these references causing him to change his description.

All linguistic signals in the segment above point in to the place between the first “goodbye” and the word “after” as being the point where the murder was most likely committed. This most sensitive point in a statement is most often the reason for the statement being written.

Traditional interview methods require the investigator to ask questions to gain information. Then, using logic, the investigator must try to distinguish whether the information is truthful or deceptive by rationalizing whether the actions could have happened. In contrast, the LSAT analyst examines a suspect’s written statement before the interrogation. Using the person’s own words, the interrogator knows beforehand what the deception is and exactly where it lies without having asked a single question. In our example statement, the investigator would immediately ambush the suspect by probing into the events that occurred between “goodbye” and “after”. Attacking this deceptive part of the statement that the suspect believes he has skillfully concealed, strips him/her of their defense and leaves them highly vulnerable significantly improving the likelihood of gaining the suspect’s confession.

The LSAT process has been used in various forms for about 30 years in the private sector. The majority of instruction is conducted for private investigators, loss prevention personnel, and more recently in human resource applications. As a personnel sergeant responsible for hiring police personnel, I use LSAT during pre-employment interviews and background investigations with a very high degree of success in determining the truthfulness and validity of information regarding applicants. Statement analysis is gaining popularity with agencies such as the F.B.I., the U.S. military intelligence and other prominent government agencies. Local law enforcement is recognizing the value of statement analysis and is leading a growing movement toward applying it in a wide range of criminal investigations from arson and assault to robbery and homicide. When applied by a competent analyst, LSAT is more dependable and less time consuming than the traditional method of rationalizing the events in the person’s story.

LSAT is highly effective for any number of applications and its usefulness is spreading well beyond criminal investigation. It is being utilized by attorneys during jury selection. At a hole-in-one golf challenge where the grand prize was a new car, those claiming to have made a hole-in-one and their witnesses were asked to submit a statement about the shot in order to confirm it prior to the prize being awarded! For anyone looking to expand their investigative toolbox, dramatically reduce investigation time, and maximize their overall effectiveness and success, LSAT can be a tremendous asset when applied properly. Persons interested in attending LSAT training may request class information at: sgtshaf@aol.com.

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To Tell the Truth (an interview with polygraph examiner Lawson Hagler)
by Shaun Kaufman and Colleen Collins

Highlands Investigations recently worked on a case with Lawson Hagler, MSW, an independent, clinical polygraph examiner and owner/operator of Accountability Polygraph Services, Inc. in Englewood, Colorado. In this interview he shared his knowledge and thoughts about the current practices and future trends in the polygraph examination field.

Q: For those of us who aren’t familiar, tell us how a polygraph examination is performed.

A: The examiner prepares relevant questions from a topic (ideally, one topic) that is significant to that interview. The examiner also uses standard questions, control and neutral questions, to get a baseline response. These questions are blended together.

A majority of our testing is done here at the office, where we seat the subject in a non-threatening room. We then place sensors on various locations on their body: galvanometers on the hand to detect changes in galvanic skin response (electrical activity and perspiration); a blood pressure cuff on the arm; and respiration monitors, called pneumographs, on the upper and lower chest.

Typically, 3 control questions are asked to obtain a baseline physiologic record. Ideally, 1 primary critical question is posed in 2 or 3 different phrasings. The subject’s responses to the relevant questions are then compared against responses to the control questions.

The premise is that someone is deceptive when they manifest abnormal physiologic responses, so the examiner poses questions and records the subject’s physiologic responses. In response to a neutral question, the blood pressure, respiration rate, and galvanic skin responses will show little variation. In response to a confrontational question, a deceptive or truthful answer pattern appears on a set of “charts” that are recorded on a computer or on long scrolls of graph paper. The charted results look similar to EKG paper and have marks that indicate when each question and answer was made in the session. Because multiple ("poly") signals from the sensors record on a single strip of moving paper ("graph"), you get the term “polygraph.”

After the test, the examiner “grades” the charts at each juncture where a question was posed. Each set of physiologic responses is scored on a scale of +9 to -9. The +9 is an extremely non-deceptive answer (in fact, any score rated greater than +3 is scored non-deceptive). Similarly, deception is found at a score of -3 to -9. Any response between +3 to -3 is scored inconclusive.

Q: How long have polygraphs been around and how accurate are they?

A: Polygraph instruments, similar to those still in use today, have been around for over 50 years. Computerization of this technology occurred in the early 1990s, resulting in significant improvements in overall test accuracy. If done according to established procedures, polygraph accuracy for single-issue (meaning, one relevant issue) exams is 90-95 percent. Of course, this is dependent on the integrity of the test process.

Q: What technological changes are on the horizon for polygraph examiners?

A: There are software applications now available that assist in scoring the physiologic data obtained from clients. These algorithms ultimately will increase the accuracy of test outcomes. One such algorithm was developed by researchers in the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University.

Also, new hardware technologies are now available. For instance, we know from extensive testing that pupil size varies considerably when a deceptive response is given, just as respiration rate, blood pressure, and skin response varies. A computer software and hardware package (developed by Limestone Technologies, Inc. at www.limestonetech.com) captures pupil response by means of a camera attached to the computer. As the computer is fed data from the traditional polygraph test, the web-cam device captures pupil size changes.

In addition, my company has purchased motion sensors using piezo technology to identify possible artifacts or other movements by the client. Private research groups and government agencies have reportedly begun analyzing data from a variety of additional measures, including EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraph or brain waves), skin temperature, and facial muscle movements.

In our office, we are also currently changing how we record and archive polygraph examinations. We have an entire storage area devoted to archiving old examination videos. Using digital technology, we are recording each examination to a DVD, which can be stored indefinitely and requires much less storage space. These DVDs then exist as evidence for court and can be used by other polygraph examiners to confirm the integrity of our examinations.

Q: What have you learned about Linguistic Statement Analysis Technique (LSAT, see Bob Shaffer’s article on LSAT in this newsletter) and is there a corroboration between LSAT and polygraph analysis?

A: From what I have been able to gather about LSAT, the correlation is exciting. Both examine how a subject responds to a stimulus concerning a past event, and what response they produce when questioned about it. While LSAT approaches this from a grammatical reflection of what the subject experienced, the polygraph examiner employs a device to physiologically record potentially deceptive responses. In both cases, we are trying to ascertain the truth and to pierce a veil of deception. We both use different techniques to obtain an idea of what did or did not happen from that one person who frequently knows the truth. As a side note, this is why police will not publicize important details about crimes because often the person who is the object of interrogation will inadvertently supply that information either verbally, through the written word, or through physiologic responses. LSAT and a polygraph examination are both means of identifying that response, and both seek the truth.

Q: We appreciate your time, Lawson.

A: I enjoyed it. Thank you.

Lawson Hagler’s practice, Accountability Polygraph Services, Inc., is located in Englewood, Colorado. He can be reached at 303-799-6688 or lawson@apolygraph.com.

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Checklist for Hiring a Private Investigator
by Colleen Collins

Looking for an old friend? Want to know if your spouse is cheating? Need to check out a potential tenant or employee?

A good private investigator (PI) can help you obtain these answers. And as with any expert you hire—a doctor, a lawyer, an insurance broker—it benefits you to take the time to ensure you’re hiring a professional who has experience, quality reputation, and good-business ethics. Below is a checklist that will help you find just such a private investigator:

1. Ask friends, business associates, your lawyer for a referral. Word of mouth gives you the inside scoop, and the opportunity to ask questions specific to your needs.

2. Check your state’s private investigator associations, most of which have web sites that post their membership directory.

3. If you can’t find a private investigation association for your state, there are multiple national PI organizations that refer investigators, such as The National Association of Investigative Specialists. Also, check your state’s legal organizations—for example, affiliates of the American Trial Lawyer’s Association or the state defense bar—which typically have a directory of recommended investigators.

4. Insurance companies use PIs constantly. Especially if your needs fall into surveillance and background checks, an excellent resource is your own homeowners insurance company. Ask to speak to a claims representative. With a few inquiries, you should be able to pinpoint which investigators your insurance company uses, which is a good referral.

5. Check Internet and Yellow Pages for private investigator listings, but remember these are paid-for ads. Ask for references; check if the PI is licensed (most states require a PI to be licensed, a few don’t); if you’re going before a judge and jury, ask if the PI has courtroom experience. NOTE: An untrained investigator may not know the laws and end up doing something illegal during an investigation—which causes you problems.

6. Before you speak to an investigator, decide what’s in your budget.

7. When you speak to an investigator, ask if he/she has done the type of work you’re seeking. More important, ask them the outcome of that type of investigation.

8. Ask to see examples of reports they’ve produced for similar cases.

9. Gauge your comfort level while speaking to the investigator. Good communication will be critical after the investigation begins. Also, be open minded—your investigator may have new ideas that are worthy of exploration.

10. Expect to pay a retainer up front. Just because a PI doesn’t ask for one (or even a reasonable hourly rate), doesn’t mean he/she is better at what they do. You want to hire someone who’s competent, not hard up for work.

Remember, a good private investigator can be your best resource!

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