Anna M. Cerri

Anna M. Cerri was a researcher affiliated with the University of Minnesota who contributed to psychophysiological research on deception detection in the early 1990s. Based on the available publication record, Cerri appears to have been a collaborator in the laboratory of William George Iacono, a prominent psychophysiologist at the University of Minnesota's Department of Psychology, working alongside other researchers investigating polygraph countermeasures.

Cerri's primary research contribution to the polygraph field was the 1992 study "Use of Antianxiety Drugs as Countermeasures in the Detection of Guilty Knowledge," published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. This study evaluated whether antianxiety drugs (diazepam, meprobamate, and propranolol) enable guilty subjects to appear innocent on polygraph tests using the guilty knowledge test (GKT) with 75 undergraduate participants. The results showed that drug status had no influence on the outcome of the GKT, an important finding for understanding the robustness of this polygraph technique against pharmacological countermeasures. This research has been widely cited in subsequent reviews of countermeasures research and discussions of the concealed information test's validity.

The 1992 study has had lasting influence in the polygraph research community, being frequently cited in psychophysiology literature on deception detection and appearing in major reviews and meta-analyses of guilty knowledge test validity. The research represented an important contribution to understanding potential vulnerabilities of polygraph testing, specifically whether pharmacological interventions could be used to defeat detection. Working within Iacono's research group, which was instrumental in critically evaluating polygraph techniques and advocating for scientifically-grounded approaches to deception detection, Cerri participated in research that helped establish the empirical foundation for assessing polygraph countermeasures.