Poly­graph tests to de­ter­mine if a sig­nif­i­cant oth­er is un­faith­ful are now in “high de­mand” in T&T.

Be­cause of this, the ser­vice is cur­rent­ly be­ing of­fered lo­cal­ly by Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd. And some peo­ple are pay­ing as much as $3,500 to get to the truth.

“In the de­vel­oped na­tions, poly­graph tests are no longer just for law en­force­ment. Many cou­ples are now util­is­ing this ser­vice to see if their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers are cheat­ing, wast­ing their joint fi­nances, or oth­er­wise ly­ing to them and break­ing down trust,” ASSL said in re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

“This re­sult forms part of the body of ev­i­dence in pur­suance of di­vorce, sep­a­ra­tion and or rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of their re­la­tion­ship,” it stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can Poly­graph As­so­ci­a­tion ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 per cent of all ad­min­is­trat­ed tests are giv­en to cou­ples ques­tion­ing the strength of their re­la­tion­ship.

“What you should al­so be aware of is that many cou­ples who re­quest this ser­vice are car­ry­ing around a bur­den of mis­trust which may lead to many oth­er is­sues and can be tox­ic to that re­la­tion­ship when not ad­dressed,” ASSL stat­ed.

“The ex­am­i­na­tion brings clo­sure and re­leas­es the bur­den and can save the re­la­tion­ship and re­build trust when you re­alise your part­ner was be­ing truth­ful,” it stat­ed.

Giv­en con­cerns sur­round­ing the is­sues of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence lo­cal­ly, ASSL was asked if it had any fears of reper­cus­sions if a re­sult con­firmed in­fi­deli­ty.

“First and fore­most, our job is to de­ter­mine if some­one is be­ing truth­ful or not based on our train­ing and qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Our ex­am­in­ers are not bi­ased with which way the out­come goes, but rather that the ex­am­i­na­tion was ad­min­is­tered fair­ly ac­cu­rate­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly ac­cord­ing to the APA stan­dards,” it stat­ed.

“Sec­ond­ly, the per­son tak­ing the ex­am must do so vol­un­tar­i­ly and there­fore con­sent must be giv­en freely be­fore the ex­am can be start­ed,” ASSL stat­ed.

ASSL added that it is im­por­tant both par­ties un­der­stand what is at stake when do­ing poly­graph test­ing and must al­so be able to ac­cept the re­sult, re­gard­less of which par­ty it sup­ports.

“Both par­ties are al­lowed to ex­press their ver­sion be­fore the ex­am­in­er for­mu­lates the ques­tions to ad­dress the is­sue at hand. Af­ter the re­sults are giv­en, the par­ties would need to de­cide on how they want to move for­ward and may need to seek pro­fes­sion­al as­sis­tance if need­ed,” it stat­ed.

“If an in­di­vid­ual is fear­ful based on a re­sult, then re­ports to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty should be made. If dur­ing a poly­graph test­ing any of the in­di­vid­u­als be­come ag­gres­sive or non-com­pli­ant the ex­am­i­na­tion would be halt­ed. If threats are made dur­ing the process it may be re­lat­ed to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty,” ASSL stat­ed.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian was told that poly­graph test­ing has un­der­gone sig­nif­i­cant ad­vances and in­cludes sev­er­al coun­ter­mea­sures to de­tect de­lib­er­ate at­tempts at try­ing to fool the tech­nol­o­gy.

“Truth ver­i­fi­ca­tion meth­ods are sci­en­tif­ic ex­am­i­na­tions, not a flip of the coin. It is a sys­tem and, when done prop­er­ly, can achieve ac­cu­ra­cy be­tween 95-98 per cent,” ASSL stat­ed.

ASSL ar­gued that the ex­am­i­na­tion is used as a tool and it has its lim­i­ta­tions in terms of what can be done in a sin­gle test so oth­ers may be nec­es­sary de­pend­ing on the in­for­ma­tion try­ing to be ver­i­fied as be­ing truth­ful or de­cep­tive.

Be­cause poly­graph tests are vol­un­tary, ASSL stat­ed that it should there­fore be seen by peo­ple as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to clear their name.

The se­cu­ri­ty firm stat­ed that the on­ly things some­one needs to do to have a suc­cess­ful ex­am are:

1. Fol­low the in­struc­tions and

2. Tell the truth.

“Peo­ple al­so think their be­ing ner­vous will show up as be­ing de­cep­tive, that is not so. That’s al­so why we give the prac­tice test to form a ‘base­line’ of the ar­eas that are be­ing mon­i­tored and is con­sid­ered a nor­mal as­pect of the poly­graph,” it stat­ed.

“While the poly­graph tech­nique is high­ly ac­cu­rate, it is not in­fal­li­ble and er­rors do oc­cur; as is the case with any test that may not be con­duct­ed with­in the lim­its of the sys­tem,” ASSL stat­ed.

Poly­graph “er­rors” may be caused by the ex­am­in­er’s fail­ure to pre­pare the ex­am­i­nee for the ex­am­i­na­tion prop­er­ly, or by a mis­read­ing of the phys­i­o­log­i­cal da­ta on the poly­graph charts.

“As with any test in­volv­ing hu­mans, it’s pos­si­ble for an ex­am­in­er to do every­thing cor­rect­ly and still have the test re­sult in an er­ror,” ASSL stat­ed.

Er­rors are usu­al­ly re­ferred to as ei­ther false pos­i­tives or false neg­a­tives. A false pos­i­tive oc­curs when a truth­ful ex­am­i­nee is re­port­ed as be­ing de­cep­tive; a false neg­a­tive, when a de­cep­tive ex­am­i­nee is re­port­ed as truth­ful.

“Since it is recog­nised that any er­ror is dam­ag­ing, ex­am­in­ers utilise a va­ri­ety of pro­ce­dures to iden­ti­fy the pres­ence of fac­tors which may cause er­rors and mit­i­gate these by us­ing a qual­i­ty sys­tem with prop­er stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures,” it stat­ed.

These in­clude:

• An as­sess­ment of the ex­am­i­nee’s emo­tion­al state

• Med­ical in­for­ma­tion about the ex­am­i­nee’s phys­i­cal con­di­tion

• Tech­ni­cal ques­tions to eval­u­ate the ex­am­i­nee’s re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ties

• Fac­tu­al analy­sis of the case in­for­ma­tion

• A pre-test in­ter­view and de­tailed re­view of the ques­tions

• Qual­i­ty con­trol re­views

• Re­dun­dan­cy

Ac­cord­ing to ASSL a poly­graph ex­am­i­na­tion can range be­tween $1,800 to $3,500 based on the na­ture and com­plex­i­ty of the case be­ing pur­sued and the amount of time re­quired to per­form the ser­vice.

“It should be not­ed that based on the na­ture of the case there is an in­ves­tiga­tive com­po­nent that is done dur­ing the ex­am­i­na­tion to de­ter­mine what rel­e­vant ques­tion should be asked,” ASSL stat­ed.

“In that phase of the ex­am­i­na­tion oth­er in­for­ma­tion is some­times un­cov­ered so the per­son re­quest­ing the ser­vice gets the great­est val­ue for their in­vest­ment,” it stat­ed.

Pre-prepa­ra­tions for the ex­am­i­nee in­clude get­ting six to eight hours of sleep and ab­stain­ing from drugs or al­co­hol 24 hours be­fore the ex­am. How­ev­er, all pre­scribed med­ica­tion must be tak­en as rec­om­mend­ed by your doc­tor and meals should be tak­en on time.

A poly­graph ex­am con­sists of four parts.

First is the pre-ex­am­i­na­tion in­ter­view which in­cludes a suit­abil­i­ty test to de­ter­mine if the ex­am­i­nee is phys­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly pre­pared for the ex­am. This phase al­so in­cludes a dis­cus­sion of the case to agree on the ob­jec­tives.

Sec­ond is the prac­tice test for the ex­am­i­nee to ex­pe­ri­ence what it feels like to an­swer ques­tions in a poly­graph en­vi­ron­ment. This helps the ex­am­i­nee to re­lax and build con­fi­dence that they can do it.

The third is the ac­tu­al test.

Fourth is the post-test in­ter­view where the ex­am­in­er does an analy­sis and the re­sults are ex­plained.

Poly­graph test­ing is one form of truth ver­i­fi­ca­tion like Voice Stress Analy­sis (VSA) used in help­ing dis­tin­guish truth­ful from de­cep­tive in­di­vid­u­als.

Poly­graph test­ing us­es a mea­sure­ment of the body’s res­pi­ra­to­ry and neu­ro­log­i­cal sys­tems to de­tect small changes that arise when some­one is not telling the truth.

Apart from de­ter­min­ing in­fi­deli­ty in a re­la­tion­ship ASSL al­so poly­graph tests for pre-em­ploy­ment, post-em­ploy­ment and oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The term “poly­graph” means “many writ­ings.” “The name refers to how se­lect­ed phys­i­o­log­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties are si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly record­ed pri­mar­i­ly from (but not lim­it­ed to) the sub­ject’s car­dio­vas­cu­lar ac­tiv­i­ty, res­pi­ra­to­ry ac­tiv­i­ty, and sweat gland ac­tiv­i­ty. For most oth­er truth ver­i­fi­ca­tion tech­niques on­ly one phys­i­o­log­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty is analysed,” ASSL stat­ed.

ASSL says it al­so has a team of ex­am­in­ers who have been cer­ti­fied in VSA.

“VSA soft­ware pro­grams are de­signed to mea­sure changes in one’s voice pat­terns caused by the stress of try­ing to hide de­cep­tive re­spons­es. The pro­gramme in­ter­prets changes in vo­cal pat­terns and in­di­cates on a graph whether the sub­ject is be­ing ‘de­cep­tive’ or ‘truth­ful’,” it stat­ed.