2025 Pilot Grant

Age-Related Deception Detection Deficits in Face-to-Face Dyadic Interactions: A Mechanistic Analysis

Alayna Shoenfelt (University of Florida Psychology), Natalie C. Ebner (McKnight Brain Institute), Kylie Wright (University of Florida Psychology), Nichole Lighthall (University of Central Florida Psychology), Dawn Bowers (University of Florida Clinical and Health Psychology)

Deception detection — the ability to distinguish lies from truth — declines with age, contributing to susceptibility to fraud among older adults. Moreover, neurobiological risk for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) compounds deception detection deficits in aging. Mechanisms underlying these deficits, however, are not well understood, especially in face-to-face interactions. Deciding whether someone is deceptive requires continuous evaluation of choice-relevant social signals, which involve inferring intentions via theory of mind (ToM), and leads to value calculations for decision options. This project investigates the impact of two such dynamic social signals in age- and ADRD-related deception detection deficits: eye contact and physiological synchrony. Eye contact is a dyadic process important for inferring intentions; physiological synchrony, which is the temporal syncing of individuals’ physiological states (via pupil dilation), plays a role in cooperation and may heighten susceptibility to deception. This study will recruit 30 young and 30 older dyads to undergo novel dual eye-tracking during a deception task, Cheat. Cheat is a face-to-face, poker-style game that, in a more ecologically-valid fashion, captures dynamic deception detection processes within dyads. We hypothesize that age-related deception detection deficits will be mediated by less dyadic eye contact and greater physiological synchrony; we also expect that greater age, higher ADRD neurobiological risk, and lower ToM ability contribute to poorer deception detection in a dyad. Results will advance mechanistic understanding of deception detection deficits in aging/ADRD; and probe eye contact and physiological synchrony as intervention targets towards reducing exploitation risk among older adults.