U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

EDA Primer for Polygraph Examiners

NCJ Number
231790
Journal
Polygraph Volume: 39 Issue: 2 Dated: 2010 Pages: 68-108
Author(s)
Mark Handler; Raymond Nelson; Donald Krapohl; Charles R. Honts
Date Published
2010
Length
41 pages
Annotation
This paper provides an overview of the electrodermal response (EDR) for the practicing and student polygraph examiner, identified for its robust data.
Abstract
Of all the signals collected and analyzed during psychophysiological detection of deception or polygraph testing, the electrodermal response (EDR) is the most robust and informative. Research shows that the EDR is easily collected and is simple to measure and interpret. However, despite this there are many misconceptions of the EDR with the polygraph profession. This paper was written as a reference on EDR for both the practicing and student polygraph examiner. It describes the present state of the scientific knowledge of the EDRs, and provides a description of the use of EDRS in the science of Psycho-physiological Deception Detection (PDD) testing. The paper concludes with how to apply the EDR to deception detection. Tables, figures, and references