PES-GESTURES IN THE PANTOMIMICS OF PERSONS HIDING THE TRUTH
Motor function is a reflected structure of neurodynamic, mental processes hidden from the direct observation. In the toolless lie detection (verification), both speech material and facial behavior of the persons involved and their pantomimics is of particular interest. The study involved ten adult respondents implicated in sexual crimes against minors, and fifty-six patients from 15 to 17 years old simulating somatic diseases in the State Budgetary Institution of Health JSC “N.N. Silishchev Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital”, Astrakhan. The aim of this work is the analysis of general pantomimic production and differentiated study of motor acts of legs in a group of persons involved in a sexual crime and patients who simulated somatic diseases. The study shows that during the concealment, the illustrative gestures accompanying human speech are reduced in favor of gestures aimed at restoring the homeostasis during stress and negative emotional response associated with possible disclosure. In the general pantomimics of the interviewed persons, motor acts of legs appear which have got the name of pes-gestures. Pes-gestures are the adaptive motor skills evolutionally associated with the limbic “escape from danger” response of the brain. The differentiated understanding of the legs’ behavior on the control and projective questions is important when verifying the fraud, since the motor production of the human body is a correlator of the state of the central neuro-psychic activity of a person. The results of experimental work may be relevant for psychologists, experts in the field of deception verification, and polygraph examiners.