Language Production and Deception: Explorative experimental studies on deception as a constraint during spoken and written narratives

Research on deception cues in writing has focused on the products of writing rather than theprocess, ignoring the rich data that lies behind the finished texts. Written process data offera unique window into the cognitive processes involved in language production alongsidespoken process data. The aim of this dissertation is to examine the the effect of deceptionon real-time language production processes of narratives in speaking and writing from a psycholinguisticperspective. The dissertation takes these research questions as its starting point:How can altered processing demands be operationalised in both speaking and writing?; Howdoes deception affect language production processes?; Does deception affect language productionprocesses differently in speaking and writing? If so, how?; and How are the speaking andwriting production processes involved in truthful and deceptive narration affected by repeatedretellings over time?The results revealed that deception does have an observable effect on these processes, butthe effect is not uniform across modalities and repeated retellings. On a global level, speakerstend to suppress presumed cues of deception, such as verbal and non-verbal disfluencies, but ona local level during the production of the altered part of a narrative, the cues seem to increase.In writing, on a global level, indications of altered processing demands in deception decreasewith repeated recall, but again, when examining the production of the actual events that arealtered, signs of altered processing persists over time. This shows that speakers and writersare able to allocate their processing resources on a global level when producing a narrative,but on the local level, altered processing demands may become evident in process data. Inconclusion, this dissertation shows promise for the use of process data in both speaking andwriting to understand how communicative intent and repetition shapes language productionprocesses over time.