NCJ Number
236810
Journal
Polygraph Volume: 40 Issue: 3 Dated: 2011 Pages: 166-171
Date Published
2011
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article traces the historical development and current acceptance by polygraph examiners of the use of computer hardware and software in the administration and interpretation of polygraph examinations.
Abstract
In 1974, John Reid, the founder of John E. Reid & Associates, which administered polygraph examinations, met with Mathew Petrovic of the Northwestern University Biomedical Laboratory. Petrovic indicated that the Biomedical Laboratory had developed expertise in the relatively new field of wave-pattern recognition and the use of software algorithms for data analysis. He proposed that his team would be responsible for the conversion of physiological polygraph recordings into digitized data. At the time of the meeting, Reid had been involved in the polygraph profession for almost 40 years. Since the personal computer had yet to be developed, the concept of digitizing polygraph data was all but inconceivable to Reid and his associates who attended Petrovic's presentation. Approximately 15 years after the meeting of Reid and Petrovic, the author of this article, who had been at that meeting, administered a series of real-life polygraph exams with equipment that was the first device that can reasonably be described as a computerized polygraph instrument. The equipment had been developed by David Raskin and John Kircher of the University of Utah. The work of Raskin and his research colleagues leading up to this first computerized polygraph exam is described. The software and associated devices were developed and distributed by the Axciton Corporation of Houston, TX. The two primary manufacturers of analog polygraph equipment, Lafayette Instrument Company and Stoelting Company, were quick to develop and market computer polygraph systems not long after the Axciton system came to the market. Subsequent hardware and software developments for computerized polygraph exams are reviewed, along with polygraph examiners' reactions to this new technology.