In their new research article, "Content in Context Improves Deception Detection Accuracy" the authors (J. Pete Blair, Timothy R. Levine and Allison S. Shaw) report on 10 studies that they conducted regarding the investigator's ability to detect deception when the interview is placed in context. They conclude that " Nonverbal leakage in the studies presented here is constant across conditions because only contextual information was varied (except in Study 6). The results of the tests presented here are overwhelming. When judges were asked to make deception judgments with some meaningful contextual information, they performed significantly better than chance and significantly better than 40 + years of research suggests they would. Clearly, knowledge of the environment in which deception occurs facilitates accurate deception judgments beyond what is possible based on observations of nonverbal leakage. Given the large amount of variation explained by the differences in environments (context), deception theories will be enhanced by explicitly recognizing the impact of context."

In the Reid Technique we teach that there are four rules to be followed in the evaluation of a subject's behavior symptoms:

1. Establish the subject's normal Behavioral patter and then look for changes from that norm or baseline
2. Read all nonverbal behavior for timing and consistency
3. Read behavioral cluster - the overall behavioral pattern - not single, isolated observations
4. Always evaluate behavior symptoms in conjunction with the case evidence and facts

.

Clearly the high accuracy rates we achieve is based on the fact that a subject's behavior should never be evaluated as a single determining factor, but always in context - always in conjunction with the case facts and evidence.