Elizabeth Tate

As immigration and homeland security become of greater concern both at a global and national level, it is imperative to review existing research on observers' ability to accurately detect deception in non‐native speakers. Objectives of this systematic review were to summarise the evidence on adult observers' ability to accurately detect deception in non‐native speakers compared to native speakers; identify response biases in observers' judgements when judging native versus non‐native speakers' statements; and explore whether differences in observers' deception detection accuracy varies across targets' proficiency levels. Two reviewers independently searched five databases and screened for all quantitative studies that met pre‐selected search criteria. Out of 1885 records identified through database searching, 11 studies met the inclusion criteria. Discriminability for non‐native speakers was above chance in four samples. Most studies found support for a lie bias when judging non‐native speakers and a truth bias when judging native speakers. In addition to further research, these results highlight the need for better reporting of stimuli and observer samples as well as a standardised measure of individuals' proficiency level.