Interrogation Procedures Consultation: Psychological Research Basis for Improved Interrogation Techniques Having Use in Employment Interviewing Situations,  the Criminal Justice Field, as  Well as with International Terrorism Investigation

     Unfortunately, in the quite recent past, interrogation as a term, has come in for some very poor press, especially associated with tangential,  multiple political connotations.  One of the major problems with interrogation, in all of its applications, is that the individual being questioned may falsify his/her answers to posed questions.  The biggest concern that surrounds all interrogations is how to detect or separate fact from fiction in the responses to the posed questions.  Polygraphing, at least as far as scientific research conducted on its validity, consistently has been shown to be greatly lacking in accomplishing what its supporters loudly claim.  Its apparent value seems to be that it "scares the hell out of them" (which is what President R. Nixon is reported to have said when he encouraged an increasing use of polygraphing with government employees).  In 1986, the US Congress seems to have at least recognized some of the very real .shortcomings of polygraphy as they banned its use in just about all commercial arenas.  Since that time, almost all non-governmental pre-employment interviewing had , under penalty of law, not been allowed to employ polygraphy in pre-employment interviews, as well as in most other employee evaluation situations.  Although this current written presentation is explicitly pointed towards use in pre-employment type situations, the descriibed interrogation procedures could be fully explected to be of potential value and use in criminal justice and anti-terrorism pursuits.

     The matter of detecting falsehood telling in others has been increasing studied by psychologists in the past couple of decades; the result being that some behavioral signs or indicators associated with the felling of falsehoods seem to be observed , but not too strongly.  For example, there is some weak suggestion that that some rather few facial expressions seem to have, with some individuals, some co-relationship with the telling of lies.  A number of non-scientificaly oriented 'experts,' using only their own highly subjective understandings, have expressed ideas regarding "body language", voice characteristics changes, as well as other unproved phenomena as being signs of deceptive explanation behavior.

     Just about anytime that the subject of getting at the truth in interrogation situations is surfaced, someone just about always brings up the subject of "truth serum."  More about this particular matter later, except that at this point it should be stressed that any attempt to utilize truth serum methodology, if involved in pre-employment interviewing, would absolutely never be allowed.  Just think of the lawsuits that could be triggered, and most likely, those making use of truth serum in this type of situation would also be vulnerable to arrest for commission of an illegal act.

     Well then, is there nothing that those who conduct pre-employment interviews can do to improve the degree and detection of honest response, on the part of the interviewee, that is both legal as well as being effective and valid?  The remainder of this current web site presentation is devoted to introduction and description of an approach that, based upon a good deal of already completed research, seems to show quite good potential.  Dr. LeRoy A. Stone, whose Ph.D. degree in psychology was granted over 43 years ago, who holds Diplomate status in Forensic Psychology from the American Board of Forensic Psychology and the American Board of Professional Psychology, and who in 1997 retired from 24 years of federal employment when he was the Chief Research Psychologist in the USA's largest intelligence agency, has developed a methodology devised for the purpose indicated at this beginning of this paragraph.

     Recently, Dr. Stone published an article in the Psychology of Espionage Reports (August 2002, Vol. II)  ) that was titled as "Preliminary Research with Stone' Treadmill-Interrogation Procedure (STIP), a Methodology that Promotes Minimization of Dissimulation and Lying."  This article can be found on the Internet with the following URL address:  http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/forensicarticle4.htm.    Basically, this article describes some preliminary type research in making use of the creation of physical/mental multi-tasking to limit the amount of mental focus and effort that an individual can bring into play when attempting to create a false or untrue response to a posed question(s).

     The concept underlying STIP is very elementary.  It, simply stated, is that if one's mind is actively involved in forced focus upon involvement in some activity that is heavily physical, and which does require some degree of mental concentration, then while this is going on there is little mental priority and ability available for the concurrent creation of falsehoods.  In other words, it is difficult to dance and chew gum at the same time.  When one is confronted with the task of answering questions regarding one's own personal history and background, and if the involved individual wishes to fabricate or deny particular aspects, then the forthcoming deceptive and untrue given answers require some well-thought-out, consistent, and highly focused mental effort in order to be perhaps effective and believable.  In the event that the mental effort, required for the invention of perhaps believable falsehoods, is interfered with or is significantly reduced, then the falsehood creation mental process can be expected to be damaged.  If the degree of damage is significant then the detection, by others, of the resultant dissimulation efforts, should be enhanced due to the fact that the quality of the deception invention can be expected to be flawed.
Research conducted by Dr. Stone (as identified in the previous paragraph) in the past few years has shown strong indications that this just given hypothesis regarding the quality of falsehood invention suffering if the teller of the lies is involved in mentally competing tasks at the same time he/she is involved in the inventive creation of the to-be-told lies.  This hypothesized relationship between quality of deception and degree of involvement in competing mental/physical tasks is further shown and carefully explained in Stone's 2002 article; readers are urged to study this article which details research supportive of the hypothesized relationship.
 
 

     Since he publication of Stone's 2002 research regarding the STIP methodology, Stone has received a number of inquiries (especially from the criminal justice field) for additional related information and he has been encouraged to conduct further and additional research on the same general topic.  The purpose of the present article is to briefly present some of Stone's more recent findings in this regard.

     One of the main problems with the procedure outlined in Stone (2002) was that the physical tasking, that had been imposed on the subjects was to maintain one's balance while walking on a modified motorized treadmill, was at times somewhat difficult and perhaps even a bit physically dangerous.  It was wondered whether some other physical task could be found that would accomplish at least the same 'interference' as the treadmill, hopefully some new task might be even more preferable.  Since Dr. Stone typically involves himself, on the average of about 6-7 days a week, in about two hours 'work' in a local gym, he in a pilot study fashion was able to study and try out a number of the exercise pieces of equipment  to see whether some might be better substitutes for the already studied treadmill methodology.

     After a number of experimental tryouts, it was found that the stationary bicycle was admirably suited for the stated and described purpose.  The actual equipment that was selected was made by Life Fitness company  and is described as the Life Cycle 9500HR Model.  This particular equipment, made by the Life Fitness company, is available in two types, regular and recumbent   models.  Dr. Stone found certain advantages when employing the latter type equipment.  A picture of the recumbent model is shown below.
 
 

      This above shown exercise stationary bicycle has a wide variety of electronic assisted data recording and display features.  It is capable of measuring/displaying heart rate, several different types of resistance patterns (i.e., random, cardio, weight-loss, hills, etc., as well as different various measures of speed, distance, calories 'burnt,'  Dr. Stone found that, for his very specific utilization of this piece of equipment, he focused on measurements mainly focused upon rider's speed (i.e., rpms, in particular).  [Note - there is no doubt that other stationary bicycles, of a similar type to the particular one used in this study, but designed/made by other manufacturers, would have proved to have been as satisfactory as the one employed.]

     A number of different types of utilizations of this exercise bicycle were done.  Dr. Stone discovered that one particular mode of use, for the purpose of damaging ability to invent and to state verbal falsehood responses, was found to be most effective.  The particular routine used that seemingly appeared, after many different experimentations, to produce the most desired results is as follows.  The instrument panel was covered, with the exception that only the rpm display was shown to the subject individual (i.e., S).  However, all of the data displays were visible to the experimenters.  Subjects were instructed to pedal the 'bike' so as to make the rpm display a particular umber (e.g., 60) and then to continue to pedal in a fashion so as to try to keep the specified rpm number stay on the instructed numerical target speed.  In other words, they were instructed to try to make the rpm counter remain at the targeted numerical value.  Although all of the various resistance types were tried, it was found that the random degree of resistance paradigm seemed to work the best.  This random paradigm involves seven different degrees of pedaling resistance; with each of them serially presented, pedaling resistance for each lasts ten seconds.   After a couple of minutes exercising on the machine, in the fashion as described above, S was asked some very simple questions while he/she was instructed to keep on with the bike riding task and to continue to try to keep maintaining the instructed rpm speed.

     Based upon a large number of trial-and-error, explorative attempts with various attempted routines, involving changing instructions pertaining to just about all of the possible parameters of the type of tasking described in the above paragraph, and involving a number of different subject individuals, were carried out.  Based upon these explorations, a somewhat final routine was settled upon.  The instructions to S's were as follows:

          You are going to ride this bike for 30 minutes; in this time, while pedaling the bike,  you will also be
          asked a number of questions that are similar to the type of questions that you might expect were you
          to be interviewed for possible new employment.  What will be unusual though is that with some of the
          questions you will be asked to respond with untrue information.  In other words, you will be expected
          to lie with some of the questions; you will be told  which questions you are to reposed to with lies.  The
          purposed of this research is to explore whether bike riding behavior changes when one is involved in
          the telling of falsehoods as compared to giving truthful responses.

          Take a look a the bike's control panel. [At this point all of the various settings and data collections
          that are controlled and/or shown on the panel are fully explained so that the 'experimenter' is
          satisfied that S adequately knowledgeable regarding the control panel.] 

          I am covering all of the control panel with this cardboard except for the rpm counter which you will
          use to initially reach a biking speed of 60 rpm's.  The bike riding task for you from this point on is to
          maintain a steady  pedaling speed of 60 rpm's.  After about a minute in which you will become familiar
          with how best to pedal steady at the instructed speed, I will begin to ask you some rather straight
          forward questions about yourself and your background.  You task simply is to attempt to keep
          pedaling steady at 60 rpm and at the same time to verbally answer my questions in as truthful
          fashion as you most likely would normally do.

         However, now I want to draw your attention to this little red light that this attached (i.e., with duck
         tape) to the top of the control panel frame.  Now this is very important - when the red light is lit
         when I ask you a question, I want you to answer the question with a lie/falsehood.  All of this may
         sound like what I am asking you to do is a simple task, however it is actually quite difficult as I 
         what you to do two or three things all at the same time.  I want to you to try to pedal the bike at a
         steady 60 rpm's and at the same time provide answers to questions that I will be asking you.  In
         addition to this, while all this is going on, I want you to notice whether this red light is on or off,
         and if it is on, then I want you to tell a falsehood to the question I am asking you.  [At this point,
         the experimenter has the S start pedaling at about 60 rpm's, then asks a couple sample 
         questions (i.e., "What is your name?") with the red light off.  Then a couple questions with the red
         light on (i.e., "Where were you born?").  If all is going well, then S is formally started on the
         research testing collection.]
 
 

     Questions asked were based upon selected questions contained in several published and
available pre-employment application questionnaires (e.g., DoD-DSS Electronic Personnel Security Questionnaire-EPSQ, Version 2.  and Preemployment Questionnaire, Office of the Clerk, U.S. District Court, Middle District of North Carolina).  The questionnaires that were selected for their questions, all tended to rather strongly include a goodly number of 'suitability' questions.   In this research phase, 11 S's (seven males, four females, age range: 20 to 41) completed the above described research taskings.  Some common questions were asked of just about all S's, however each S was asked some questions that were not necessarily asked with all S's.  The major goal in this data collection was to expose each of the S's to the multitasking responding situation (i.e., pedaling the bike to maintain a targeted speed, respond to personal referenced questions, and to have to detect a visual signal to lie or to tell the truth when responding to posed questions).  Later debriefing of the S's was designed to take place regarding their subjective impressions of having been engaged in the multitasking research environment.  Experimenter's observations regarding the 11 S's were also systematically collected.
 
 

     All 11 S's reported that they believed that they experienced great difficulty when attempting
to respond in the multitask research situation.  They all described that they became very aware that when they were trying to orally respond to posed questions that their ability to maintain a constant pedaling speed was noticeably reduced.  Almost without exception, when they were attempting to verbally respond to posed questions, their pedaling speed dropped from the instructed 60 rpm level, sometimes as low as down in the mid-30s rpm range.  Ten of the 11 S's reported that they experienced increased difficulty when attempting to respond in an honest or 'true' fashion to the posed questions and that they all reported that they experienced some very significant increased impairment when trying to create a falsehood or lying response to the posed questions.  In other words, all of the tested S's, uniformly were quite aware that their abilities to develop and to relate falsehoods, in the research situation, were marked inferior to what they believed they were capable of in a more normal non-multitasking involvement environment.  Rather interestingly, a couple S's communicated that unless they 'sort of' almost totally abandoned their focus on the physical pedaling task, they found it almost impossible to develop any falsehoods, when so instructed to respond in this fashion.  Three of the S's volunteered that they thought the research procedures could be used as a type of lie detector as when they were trying to respond with lies, they became very aware that their pedaling speed even more grossly deviated (almost always in a downward direction) from the 60 rpm instructed level.  They advised that all one would have to do is to compare their responses to the pedaling speed measure and if their pedaling speed drastically changed (almost always in a downward direction), then this was when they were trying to respond with falsehoods.  When this observation was shared with those S's, who had not volunteered any type of theory that falsehoods could be detected by inspection of their pedaling speeds, they uniformly agreed with this idea and indicated that they recalled that such a relationship also was true with their performances.

     Debriefing also revealed that none of the tested S's believed or 'felt' that the research
taskings demeaned, insulted, disrespected or threatened them (physically and/or psychologically) or otherwise caused them any meaningful discomfort except for the fact that they perceived themselves being noticeably stressed (in the testing situation) by the "difficult' multitasking problem(s) given to them.  Nine reported that they felt to have been in any physical danger when being tested while riding the stationary bike.  About half expressed that what had gone on was "fun" or some other  similar such descriptive term.
 
 

     The experimenter's and his assistant's observations, although viewed from a different
vantage points and perspectives than those of the S's, actually were not at all inconsistent from the more general observations and opinions voiced by the S's, as reported in the two immediately previous paragraphs.  The experimenter(s) had more visual access to the bike's full and complete instrument/data display than did the S's who only were able to view the ongoing speed rpm counter display.  The experimenter(s) were able to see, especially at the end of a S's  30-minute long research data collecting session, a couple summary data counter displays.  The one that was regarded as perhaps the most 'valuable' was the counter that displayed the number of miles (and fractions thereof) pedaled during the 30-minute session.  Using this numerical information, it was possible to determine who of the S's had the least and the greatest difficulties adhering to the instructed 60 rpm targeted speed .

     Although it was believed that the particular Life Cycle 9500HR stationary recumbent bicycle, (manufactured by the Life Fitness company, was extremely well suited for the described research, it was thought that data collection could have been vastly improved were a PC type computer made compatible with the bike's already existent computerized settings and data display equipment.  The experimenter did not possess the technical computer and relevant software development expertise to have designed any type of extraneous computer connection to the bike's self-contained computerized capabilities.  Any future research, conducted along the lines of what is being communicated in the present report, must include the addition of additional computerized recording of the research behavior exhibited by any involved S's.  [It should be noted that the experimenter actually tried out, in a sort of trial and error approach, most of the exercise pieces of equipment that are normally found in a large and well-equiped gym, to try to find the particular piece that would best lend itself for use in multitasking type research.  It soon became obvious that 'cardio' type equipment was clearly best suited; the 'weight' and 'stretching' or 'flexibility' equipment seemed not at all appropriate.  The only problem with the particular piece of equipment that was used was that, due to its weight (well over 150 lb.) and bulky size, it was not a easily portable piece.]

     After 'running' the first couple of S's it became very obvious to the experimenter(s) that the imposed multitasking caused a significant mental conflict when the second (and especially the third) additional tasks, which were heavily mental in type, were added to the first or primary pedaling task that had a focus upon a targeted pedaling speed.  In order to respond to the second task (i.e., respond with a truthful answer) and especially the third task (i.e., respond with an untrue answer when visually signaled to do so).  In order to adequately respond to the second and third tasks, S's very clearly had to make a switched focus from their pedaling task focus.  The result was a very obvious change in their pedaling behavior; almost always in a reduction direction.  What was not stated, when the directions to S's were described earlier in this report, is that when the last eight S's were tested, when they started to 'unfocus' on the pedaling task, when the second and third tasks were additionally present, they were orally instructed by one of the experimenters with a emphasized comment: "do not forget to keep pedaling at a 60 rpm rate."

     It was observed that the S's clearly had the most multitask difficulty when they were instructed (i.e., by the red light coming on) to create a falsehood response.  When so instructed, almost all more grossly changed (in a downward direction) their pedaling speed.  Also, quite obvious for many of the S's, they exhibited real difficulty in mentally creating the subject material for telling a lie.  This was also clearly and independently confirmed by the S's themselves when they were debriefed.  Those who seemed to have the greatest difficulty in developing a lie response almost always seemed to be the S's who showed the greatest change (almost always in a downward direction) in pedaling rpm speed.
 
 

     Based upon a long history of published research on the behavior effects of multitasking situations, the research obtained, which are described in above paragraphs, were not really at all surprising; in fact, they were expected.  Earlier published research conducted by the experimenter ["Preliminary Research with Stone's Treadmill-Interrogation Procedure (STIP), a Methodology that Promotes Minimization of Dissimulation and Lying," which can be found at: http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/interrogationprocedure.html], clearly predated just about the same behavioral results as obtained and reported in this present reporting endeavor.
Just about all of the reported research on multitasking is consistent with the following, long-ago (i.e., in  ~100 BC), made observation:
 
 

    It was not intended to try to present a long, complete historical survey of the published behavioral science literature that directly pertains multitasking effects on behavior; instead what will be initially mentioned and briefly discussed are a couple  very major, important and recent pertinent published articles.  Rubinstein, Meyer, and Evans (2001) published the results of an impressive series of investigations regarding behavioral effects of involvement in multitasking situations.  Their seminal report also contains an impressive review and discussion of the prior published literature pertaining to multitasking; their references listing included 107 references.  Essentially, Rubinstein et al reported finding that multitasking is inefficient because whenever one tries to do two things at once, one loses time as one has to switch from one to another - and the more complicated the tasks, the longer the switch takes.  That is because each time one switches tasks one goes through two distinct stages: deciding to do something new, and then turning off the mental rules needed to do the first task and turning on the mental rules need to do the second.

     A good deal of the more recent research on multitasking has involved physiological measurement of brain processing activities going on during the multitasking attempts.  In general, previous research had shown that when a person attempts to, for example, visually track two objects at once, the region of the brain (as depicted in MRI scans) is actually less active then when the person visually tracks a single object.  A new study, by Marcel (2001), who also employed MRI technology, showed that the same thing happens even when two different regions of the brain are in use.

    In the past couple of years, many political  jurisdictions became very heated in their considerations of whether using cell phones while driving should be legally allowed or not.  Although a good deal of very focused research has been conducted regarding this problem, which is clearly a multitasking behavioral situation, perhaps the most attended to were the investigations conducted  by researchers at the University of Utah, on behalf of the U.S.'s National Safety Council.  Based upon their conducted research on the using of cell phones while driving, most  certainly a multitasking situation, they confirmed that attempting to do the two quite different tasks at the same time was a really bad idea (regardless whether the phone use was hands-on or hands-off).  After reading this article, Dr. Stone realized that he had seen sufficient evidence to support the contention that driving while also communicating on a cell phone was a rather dangerous driving arrangement.

    At least for the past 21 or so centuries, it seems that wise persons were fully aware, in a somewhat general sense, that the best way to perform multiple complex tasks is to do them one after another, giving each one's full concentration.  With this kind of understanding, the current results obtained in this present report are entirely consistent with what has been subjectively and scientifically known to be true.  [Note - while writing this article, I (i.e., Dr. Stone) was at my local gym (where I can be found almost daily from about 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.) and I could not miss viewing a rather unexpected sight; a fellow-gym-goer (who is generally regarded by the gym employees and regulars as one of the gym's 'weirdest' and most eccentric gym customers) was sitting on one the recumbent Life Cycle 9500HR machines and playing a violin.  Since Dr. Stone and this man (who was a professional musician) did already know each other as fellow gym users, he was able to with ease quiz this man regarding his playing a violin while sitting on the stationary bike.  This man related that he brought his violin to the gym with him with the idea that he might be able to get in some practice while exercising on some the gym equipment which is designed to exercise only the lower body.  He assumed that this would allow him to use his upper body (and limbs) to play the musical instrument.  He explained that when he tried to do both at the same time he found that he could do neither one at all well.  He further explained that since he wanted to play the violin as well as he was able to, in order to do so, he had to entirely quite pedaling the bike - instead he used the bike seat as only a substitute for a chair. Enough said!]
 
 

[Note -Because the purpose of this report was to introduce some new ideas and thinking to the 'human resources' and possibly 'personnel security' officials, the results will be mainly discussed in terms of their possible practical use, rather than in the more academic or 'pure science' fashion.] 

     Consistent with the title of this report, the reported research was focused upon imposition of a carefully designed series of multitasking situations where the most interesting task was responding orally to questions coming from existent pre-employment interviewing questionnaires.  The findings from this just reported research effort are very clear and are easy to interpret.  The main research hypothesis (i.e., the main focus to be investigated) had to do with creating a research environment that rendered the involved S's to be damaged or impaired with respect to their being able to develop and create quality-level falsehoods.  In other words, the studied S's became persons for whom (wen present in the multitasking environment) it became difficult to fabricate quality (i.e., believable) lies.

     Also evident, when inspecting the results was the the studied multitasking environment being used, not only for causing a reduction in the quality of falsehood creation, but also a somewhat effective 'lie detector.'  Actually, a much more sound theoretical basis can be formulated for the described multitasking procedures (as employed in the presently report investigation) as a lie detector than has been put forth (and which has never been at all convincing) for the polygraph technique.

     However, it seems more practical to employ the suggested procedures as a way to influence applicants for employment to increase the amount of truthfulness in their response to interview questioning.  It is likely that this type of created influence is most strong when an involved individual has made no carefully planed and practiced untruthful answers.  If deceptive responses are well planed and practiced there really is no way of influencing persons to tell the truth.  Use of the polygraph to try to detect deception, when the involved individual is motivated and well rehearsed to lie, has been repeatedly shown to be rather useless.  Actually the same probably could be said of this now suggested multitasking procedures when dealing with a motivated and practiced liar.  With this type applicant, the only way to obtain correct information regarding that person is from a well conducted background investigation.  The present experimenter, based upon his past training, highly relevant work experience, his focused knowledge of the field based upon many years of active research (almost all which has been published), feels comfortable in expressing an opinion that suggests that a person who is motivated to lie and is practiced (i.e., rehearsed) with very specific lie -telling will not be caught, trapped, uncovered, detected or discovered by any known psychological or physiological technique or methodology.

Addendum Research Report

     Shortly after completing the above described research, Dr. Stone realized that deployment of exercise stationary bikes (as well as using a modified treadmill, as described in Stone (2002) was not a very practical tool arrangement due to their size(s) and heavy weight.  Dr. Stone's wife (also a dedicated daily user of the gym) had shortly before started to make daily use at home of a simple pieces of health related equipment, which was a balance board (circular in shape,, 20 inches diameter), manufactured by the Orthopedic Physical Therapy Products company.  Dr. Stone saw some possibilities with this balance board equipment and tried out a new pilot research effort.  What was found to work rather well in combination with the balance board was  use of a broom stick (minus the broom part).  This broom stick was then used by Dr. Stone, who stood behind the individual or the board, and used the stick to create an imbalance situation by wedging the stick under a side edge of the board and pushing the stick upward, in a very gentle fashion so as to very slightly push the board upward or in some balancing situations by not allowing the board to be inclined downward near where the stick had been inserted.  A picture of the balance board is shown below:
 
 

    This board, along with use of the broomstick, was employed with three S's (one of whom had also served as an S in the reported investigation that employed the stationary bike.  The S's first were allowed some several minutes to familiarize themselves with the balance board.  The formal data collection began by starting to ask them the same type questions that had been used with the S's who instead rode the stationary bike.  Somewhere between 40 and 60% of the questions were preceded by turning on a red light, that had been placed in front of them, and they had been instructed that if the light was on then they were to respond to the then current question by fabricating a falsehood.  In most (but not all) of the times when the red light was on, the E made use of the broomstick to create a very minor imbalance situation.

     The results generally were really quite similar to those observed in the stationary bike research and were not inconsistent (which could be inferred) from those results obtained with the somewhat different, 'dependent variable,' earlier research reported in Stone, 2002.  These 'consistent' results would seem to suggest that use of the multitasking balance board arrangement, along with the other imposed pre-employment  questioning multitasking demands, can operate to produce a situation in which the effective telling of lies seems to be significantly damaged.  In addition, balance board performance decrements were observed being a possible sign of falsehoods being expressed.  One very major advantage of using the balance board, instead of using a stationary bike or a treadmill, is that the entire equipment required is eminently portable.  However, it must be said that the stationary bike, because of the bike's instrument panel information being available (both in differing amounts to S and  E) seems to be clearly for producing results consistent with the intent of the conducted investigations.
 
 

     What has been expressed in this already too lengthy report of multiple 'early' research, seems to have a good deal of practical application.  It most certainly appears quite feasible to say that there appears to be rather consistent research results that all point to the same set of conclusions.  The use of the multitasking type arrangement, that has been presented in this report, when deployed as a tool or means to increase the amount of truthfulness, by making it more difficult for an involved person to develop or create falsehoods, seems to be supported by the results.  Actually, this multitasking approach would seem to not be at all classifiable as a type or variety of torture, nor as a threatening arrangement used to 'force' persons to confess or otherwise tell the truth.  Actually, the multitasking approach, it can be argued, bears some similarity to the use of truth serum, which is, correctly or wrongly, employed to 'lessen' one/s ability to tell lies.

    In a similar vein, use of the multitasking approach also, seems to appear potentially useful as a type of lie detector.  Use of the multitasking procedure, when involving deployment of the stationary bike and it's 'set-up', as described in the report, most certainly appears to be best suited for this second utilization, as a lie detector.  Were a PC type computer 'hooked-up' to the bike and made able to fully record pedaling response data, along with time latencies, in a graphic and statistical sense, then this particular multitasking approach arrangement would seem to be quite well suited as a lie detector.  At least, it's use could be theoretically 'linked' to lie detection whereas use of the polygraph seems quite difficult to theoretically 'link' to lie detection.  It should be clearly understood, that the multitasking approach makes absolutely no connection to any kind of physiological measurement that are believed sometimes and by some persons to be 'linked ' to the detection of the telling of falsehoods. 

     What is remarkable, is that when employing the described multitasking approach, realization of both above described utilizations are obtainable in a single application.  This can be more clearly ascertained when employing the stationary bike multitasking approach and is  less clearly obtainable when using the treadmill approach and even lesser with the balance board approach.  When trying to obtain behavioral data, with a stationary bike multitasking situation, it may or not be (it depends upon the studied individual and the particular situation) helpful to inform the S that a sudden reduced focus on the targeted pedaling speed possibly can be inferred to be an indicator of falsehood invention.  If this type instruction then results in even a greater focus and attention on the targeted pedaling speed, an expected result is likely to be associated with a temporary  increased damage to the mental cognitive abilities and skills, upon which falsehood creation would be expected to be based.
 
 

     At the present time, Dr. Stone may be available (at least in the mid-Atlantic region; beyond this distance, special arrangements may influence exceptions) to instruct and otherwise assist an organization to the pre-employment interrogation methodology described in this report.  Up to now, only consultation involving instruction of the methodology, using the highly portable balance board, has taken place with a handful of law enforcement personnel.  If an organization were to want consultation that is more focused upon utilization of stationary bike equipment, it is advised that it is that organization's responsibility to provide a stationary bike for the consultation/instruction.  Any organization interested in potential consultation in the use of the multitasking methodology (as described in this report) should contact Dr. LeRoy A. Stone, whose Email and Web Site have the following Internet addresses:
lastone2@earthlink.net  and
http://ww.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/home.html.
 
 

     Readers of this present research report, it is believed, stand a good chance of also having interest in a couple other products and services, provided by Dr. Stone.  A few years ago, Dr. Stone almost entirely 'retired' from his full time forensic psychology practice, in which he had been professionally active since his retirement from federal service; his last federal assignment was as the Chief Research Psychologist in the USA's largest intelligence agency.  In the past couple of years, Dr. Stone has continued to develop and market the Personnel Security Standards Psychological Questionnaire (PSSPQ).  The PSSPQ is a short and easy to administer psychological tests that very accurately can predict success or failure to be eventually granted a high-level security clearance were one to be processed for such.  Its predictive accuracy has been shown, in multiple research investigations, to be about 95%+.  More information regarding the PSSPQ can be found at:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/psspq.html.

     Built along the same lines as the PSSPQ is the Probity/Honesty   Inventory (PHI).  This even shorter psychological test was designed as a integrity type test and it measure several different scales, each one corresponding to a fitness/suitability concern area.  It was standardized using a very different approach than any other available or commercially offered integrity tests.  More information regarding the P I can be found at:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/phitest.html.

     The Serial Position  (SEPO testing procedure was first described by Dr. Stone almost 20 years ago.  It is a procedure that is founded on one of the best established psychological research understandings of the past century, the serial position effect.  The SEPO test has been entirely computerized.  It was designed to detect whether 'special' or guilty knowledge was possessed by an individual in a situation whereby the involved individual wishes and designs to hide the fact that such knowledge is held.  For example, the SEPO approach could be used to detect whether an individual was or was not a present or past FBI employee or whether he/she had a high-level knowledge of the Russian language (or any other language).  Information regarding the SEPO test can be found at:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/sepo.html.