THE CONTROL QUESTION TEST IN POLYGRAPHIC EXAMINATIONS WITH ACTUAL CONTROLS FOR TRUTH

Subjects who were guilty of a mock crime, innocent and informed of the details of the crime or innocent, and uninformed of the details were examined on the polygraph with a modified version of a Control Questio n Test, which normally contains questions which are incriminating, amb iguous, and likely to be answered with a lie. We challenged the necess ity of using incriminating, ambiguous control questions which may dema nd a lie as an answer. Instead, we created and tested control question s that were unambiguous and answered truthfully. The results, with the modified questions, showed correct identification of 86% of the guilt y subjects and 83 to 89% of the innocent subjects.