Polygraphs, or "lie detectors", are used widely in America, including on sex

游客2024-02-04  14

问题     Polygraphs, or "lie detectors", are used widely in America, including on sex offenders, but in Britain many remain skeptical. Polygraphs do not detect lies. They measure changes in physiology, such as breathing rate, sweating and blood pressure. Telling lies is often stressful and can prompt jumps in the readings. But other things—fear, embarrassment, worries about being wrongfully accused—can do the same. Enthusiasts say that polygraphs accurately detect lies 80 - 90% of the time. The British Psychological Society cites studies showing similar figures but cautions that problems in the research mean that the real rate is probably much lower. And "false positive" rates(defining a truthful person a liar)can be as high as 47% .
    Boosters of the government’s scheme say the point is that using polygraphs encourages sex offenders to reveal more information, before, during and after the test. In a 2010 -2011 pilot study offenders who took polygraph tests made more than twice as many "clinically significant exposures" — information that could prompt changes in the way they are managed—as those that did not. Many said they would not have done so without undergoing the test. Jane Wood, a psychologist at the University of Kent who co-authored the report on the pilot, says that some offenders found the tests helpful as way to convince their families they were being honest about their behaviour. Others said that the discussions prompted when they failed the test helped them better to understand the conditions of their license.
    Polygraph tests do not stand on their own, argues Don Grubin, a professor of psychiatry at Newcastle University: they should be one of a number of tools used to assess offenders. Nonetheless some remain uneasy. Those using the tests may become contented, worries Anne McAlinden of Queen’s University, Belfast, and give them excessive weight. In the government’s study, the more tests offenders took, the fewer lies were labeled. That might indicate that they became more truthful, or it might suggest that they were getting better at gaining the test. [br] It can be inferred from the passage that polygraph tests______.

选项 A、urge sex offenders to expose all the information during the tests
B、help to expose the psychological roots of the sex offenders
C、are found to do offenders good whether they pass or fail the tests
D、help to convict offenders of crimes if they cannot pass the tests

答案 C

解析 推理判断题。本题考查测谎仪测试的作用。根据定位段最后两句可知,从心理学家简·伍德与人合著的报告看,一些罪犯发现测试有帮助是因为这是使他们的家人相信自己行为诚实的一种方式,其他人认为即使罪犯没有通过测试,由此引发的争议也可以帮助罪犯更好地了解他们假释的条件,C)“不管是否通过测试,对罪犯都有好处”,是对上述两句话的总结,故为答案。A)“促使性罪犯在测试期间揭露所有的信息”,是对定位段第一句的片面理解,原文说的是诱使性罪犯在测试前后以及期间透露更多信息,而非只在测试期间,故排除;B)“有助于揭露性罪犯的心理根源”和D)“如果罪犯不能通过测试,则有助于给其定罪”,这两点原文均未提及,故排除。
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