Metacognition
Do child witnesses' confidence levels show how accurate they are?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Despite legal beliefs that child eyewitnesses are unreliable, older children can use confidence ratings to signal the accuracy of their identifications.
Key findings
Memory discrimination improved with age. In target-present lineups, the overall correct identification rates were .32 for the youngest group, .43 for the middle group, and .55 for the oldest group. Using specialized analysis, the researchers found a positive relationship between confidence and accuracy for children in middle childhood and late childhood.
Methodology
The researchers reanalyzed historical data from previous studies. They then conducted an original experiment with 2,205 children between the ages of 4 and 17. The children watched a video of a man completing a normal daily routine. Afterwards, they were asked to identify him from an interactive lineup containing 6 faces, and they recorded their confidence before and after making their choice using a scale with 5 levels.
Limitations
This research does not show that children are perfectly accurate; even older children showed some overconfidence and did not achieve complete accuracy at high confidence. Additionally, the study used non-violent videos, so it does not demonstrate how children perform under the stress of real-world crimes. Finally, the experiment used a brief distraction task, meaning it does not address how delay affects memory confidence over longer periods.
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