Linguistic correlates of self in deceptive oral autobiographical narratives

    Authors

    J. S. Bedwell; S. Gallagher; S. N. Whitten;S. M. Fiore

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Conscious. Cogn.

    Keywords

    Autobiographical; Narrative; Self; Deceptive; Deception; Coh-Metrix; Cohesion; Linguistic; Explicit action verbs; Referential coherence; COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION; DETECTING DECEPTION; LANGUAGE; BEHAVIOR; STYLES; LIES; TEXT; CUES; Psychology, Experimental

    Abstract

    The current study collected orally-delivered autobiographical narratives from a sample of 44 undergraduate students. Participants were asked to produce both deceptive and non-deceptive versions of their narrative to two specific autobiographical question prompts while standing in front of a video camera. Narratives were then analyzed with Coh-Metrix software on 33 indices of linguistic cohesion. Following a Bonferroni correction for the large number of linguistic variables (p < .002), results indicated that the deceptive narratives contained more explicit action verbs, less linguistic complexity, and less referential coherence (sentences being cohesive with each other). The results support a theory that, in deceptive narratives, there is greater narrative distance between the self that narrates and the self that is narrated about. This suggests that narrative selves are constituted not as autonomous selves, but are subject to processes (e.g., psychological, linguistic, social) that are likely operating on a subconscious level. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Consciousness and Cognition

    Volume

    20

    Issue/Number

    3

    Publication Date

    1-1-2011

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    547

    Last Page

    555

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000294515400006

    ISSN

    1053-8100

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