Co‐Witness Confidence,Conformity, and Eyewitness Memory: An Examination of Normative and Informational Social Influences

We explored conformity and co‐witness confidence in eyewitness memory. Confederates provided misleading information and confidence ratings during a cued recall test, and participants publicly provided answers to this test in turn. Participants performed memory tests with a confederate, then completed individual memory tests. Results indicated that confederates who answered questions prior to participants impacted their public and private memory reports for accurate information but only impacted public reports for misleading information. Participants' confidence in their performance in the presence of a confederate mirrored the confederate's confidence levels, suggesting a confidence conformity effect. Results are explained in terms of differential effects of informational and normative influence for accuracy and confidence in co‐witness memory reports. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Confidence in own and others' knowledge

A person's confidence judgement of a statement reflects his/her degree of belief in the correctness of that statement. Deficient ability to assess the correctness of statements (or beliefs) can have serious consequences in many situations. This study compares the realism (calibration) of subjects' confidence ratings in two situations ( n = 64). The first situation was when the subjects confidence rated their own answers to general knowledge questions. The second was when the subjects gave confidence ratings of another person's answers to general knowledge questions. The results show that subjects were more poorly calibrated and were more overconfident in the second situation, i.e. when they gave confidence ratings of answers given by another person, compared with when they rated their own answers. The data further indicates that the results can not be explained in terms of the amount of cognitive processes invested when making the confidence judgements. For example, the subjects rated the other person's answers to questions they had answered themselves, and to questions they had not seen before. No differences in confidence or in calibration and other measures of judgmental realism were found between these two categories of questions. Nor did instructions to imagine the thought process of the other person improve any of these measures. The subjects disagreed with the other person's answer on 23% of all occasions. Significantly poorer calibration was shown where subjects disagreed with the other person than where they agreed. Contents of a social nature attended to by the subjects may have affected the results. The results, when related to previous research in the area, give rise to the question of how the social situation can be arranged to achieve the best calibration.     

Instability of individual differences in the association between confidence judgments and memory performance

There are large individual differences in the degree of association between the accuracy of memories and subjective confidence in those memories. Are these differences stable within the same test, and between alternate forms of a test? In Experiment 1, college students were tested on 3 recognition memory tasks, then retested 2 weeks later on alternate forms of the same tasks. The relationship between confidence judgments and recognition performance displayed low split-half stability and low alternate-forms stability. A second experiment with elderly adults replicated these findings. In a third experiment, college students recalled answers to general knowledge questions and rated confidence in the correctness of each answer. Individual differences in the association between confidence and recall performance were not stable across the odd- and even-numbered items on the test. These data indicate the need for the development of procedures that will produce stable estimates of individuals’ metacognitive accuracy.     

The accuracy–confidence relationship in an eyewitness task: anxiety as a modifier

The present study investigated the role of anxiety as a moderator of the relationship between accuracy and confidence in an eyewitness recall task. Participants selected as high or low anxious on a test anxiety scale viewed a video clip of a crime. One week later they answered verbally a series of questions about the video, rating their confidence in each answer. Observers were shown a video-recording of each participant's test session and rated how confident they appeared overall. It was argued that people high in test anxiety would appraise their performance to a greater degree than low-anxious people, resulting in a significant correlation between accuracy and subjective confidence for high-anxious but not for low-anxious participants. The results obtained supported this hypothesis, and found similar relationships between accuracy and perceived confidence. Highly anxious participants expressed less overall confidence in their answers than low anxious participants. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Episodic feeling-of-knowing accuracy and cued recall in the elderly: evidence for double dissociation involving executive functioning and processing speed

This research investigated adult age differences in a metamemory monitoring task-episodic feeling-of-knowing (FOK) and in an episodic memory task-cued recall. Executive functioning and processing speed were examined as mediators of these age differences. Young and elderly adults were administered an episodic FOK task, a cued recall task, executive tests and speed tests. Age-related decline was observed on all the measures. Correlation analyses revealed a pattern of double dissociation which indicates a specific relationship between executive score and FOK accuracy, and between speed score and cued recall. When executive functioning and processing speed were evaluated concurrently on FOK and cued recall variables, hierarchical regression analyses showed that executive score was a better mediator of age-related variance in FOK, and that speed score was the better mediator of age-related variance in cued recall.     

Initial Testing Does Not Necessarily Affect Eyewitness Recall Assessed by Specific Questioning

In eyewitness situations, open recall is followed by specific questioning about the witnessed event. We examined whether initial testing affects later recall of actions and specific details. After watching a video of a bank robbery, participants completed an initial testing phase that involved free recall, specific questions about the actions or details of the event or a control condition with no initial testing. In the final test, correct and incorrect answers, accuracy and response confidence for actions and details were analysed. Initial testing affected neither recall nor confidence. The participants were more accurate for actions than details. Response confidence was higher for correct than incorrect answers and higher for details than actions in correct answers. The results showed that specific questioning affects differently the recall of event actions and details and that remembering details increased confidence. Investigative interviewers can use this evidence when questioning information not reported in initial testing.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An experimental study of social performance and delay on the testimonial validity of story recall

Sixty adults from the city of Linz took part in this experiment. They read a story—The War of the Ghosts—in pairs, and were required to reproduce it either jointly, in dyads, or singly, and either immediately following or one week later. In addition they were asked a number of specific questions about the story, and gave various ratings of confidence and completeness. As predicted, social (dyadic) performance increased confidence, completeness and the incidence of implicational errors (errors which do not contradict the original). Delay significantly diminished confidence. Analyses of confidence for right and wrong answers indicated that subjective testimonial validity was substantial in all conditions. Analyses of objective testimonial validity showed that dyads are more trustworthy than individuals when they are correct, but are less trustworthy when they happen to be wrong. They overall conjidence I accuracy correlation across conditions of +0.6 masks the fact that the greatest obstacle to valid testimony is inappropriate confidence in wrong answers, especially in dyads, and especially immediately after the event. The incidence of implicational errors was highly related positively to measures of confidence and accuracy, whereas confusional errors were independent. Implicational errors are regarded as an especially important element in schematic recall, and are an important aspect of the superiority of social performance.     

Mood and realism of confidence judgements of one''s own answers to general knowledge questions

This study examines the effect of a depressed mood on the realism of subjects' confidence judgements of the correctness of answers to general knowledge questions. Research conducted on how mood influences cognitive processes gives reason to expect that a depressed mood might increase the realism of individuals' confidence ratings. Sixty subjects were divided into three conditions, two of which were given mood induction, one condition into an elated-happy mood and one condition into a depressed-sad mood. As evidenced by subjects' responses to mood scales only the depressed condition was affected by the mood induction. All subjects answered 93 general knowledge questions and rated their confidence in the correctness of the answer given. Subjects were instructed to think aloud when answering the last 31 questions. The conditions did not differ with respect to the proportion of questions answered correctly, mean level of confidence, nor with respect to three measures of the realism in subjects' confidence ratings (calibration, over/underconfidence and resolution). The results were the same when questions answered with and without think aloud instructions were analysed separately.     

Consciousness in Schizophrenia: A Metacognitive Approach to Semantic Memory

Recent studies have shown that schizophrenia may be a disease affecting the states of consciousness. The present study is aimed at investigating metamemory, i.e., the knowledge about one's own memory capabilities, in patients with schizophrenia. The accuracy of the Confidence level (CL) in the correctness of the answers provided during a recall phase, and the predictability of the Feeling of Knowing (FOK) when recall fails were measured using a task consisting of general information questions and assessing semantic memory. Nineteen outpatients were paired with 19 control subjects with respect to age, sex, and education. Results showed that patients with schizophrenia exhibited an impaired semantic memory. CL ratings as well as CL and FOK accuracy were not significantly different in the schizophrenic and the control groups. However, FOK ratings were significantly reduced for the patient group, and discordant FOK judgments were also observed more frequently. Such results suggest that FOK judgments are impaired in patients with schizophrenia, which confirms that schizophrenia is an illness characterized by an impaired conscious awareness of one's own knowledge.     

Witness confidence and accuracy: is a positive relationship maintained for recall under interview conditions?

A large positive correlation between eyewitness recall confidence and accuracy (C-A) is found in research when item difficulty is varied to include easy questions. However, these results are based on questionnaire responses. In real interviews, the social nature of the interview may influence C-A relationships, and it is the interviewer's perception of the accuracy of a witness that counts. This study was conducted to investigate the influence of these factors for recall of a video. Three conditions were used; the same questions were used in each. Participants in condition 1 (self-rate questionnaire condition, n = 20) were given a questionnaire that required them to answer questions and rate confidence on a scale. Pairs of participants in condition 2 (self-rate interview condition, n = 40) were given the role of eyewitness or interviewer. Eyewitnesses were asked questions by an interviewer and responded orally with answers and confidence judgements on a Likert scale. Participants in condition three (interviewer-rate interview condition, n = 40) were tested in the same way as condition two but provided confidence judgements in their own words. Interviewers independently rated each confidence judgement on the Likert scale. The experiment showed high C-A relationships, particularly for ‘absolutely sure’ responses. The main effect of the social interview condition was to increase confidence in correct answers but not in incorrect answers. However, the advantage of this effect was tempered by the fact that, although observers can differentiate between confident and less confident answers, less extreme confidence judgements were ascribed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of the age of eyewitnesses on the accuracy and suggestibility of their testimony

Previous studies have compared the performance of young adult eyewitnesses with that of children or elderly eyewitnesses, but few studies have allowed direct comparison of the performance of all three age groups. The accuracy and suggestibility of accounts of a video recording of a kidnapping were investigated using an experimental eyewitness paradigm. Subjects were drawn from three age groups: children (aged 7–9 years); young adults (aged 16–18 years) and elderly subjects (aged 60–85 years). Subjects' accuracy in answering non-misleading questions and their susceptibility to misleading information was measured. Both the elderly and child subjects gave fewer correct answers and more incorrect answers to non-misleading questions than did young adults. The elderly subjects gave fewer correct responses but also fewer incorrect responses to non-misleading questions than did child subjects. Children were more suggestible than either elderly or young adults. No significant difference was found in the suggestibility of elderly and young adults. Contrary to the trace strength hypothesis no relationship was found between accuracy of recall and suggestibility. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eyewitness memory: Balancing the accuracy,precision and quantity of information through metacognitive monitoring and control

Although memory deteriorates over time, people may be able to maintain high accuracy by metacognitively monitoring the quality of their memories and strategically controlling their memory reports. We test two mechanisms of metacognitive control: Exercising a report option (withholding uncertain responses) and adjusting response precision (providing imprecise, but likely accurate, responses). Participants observed a mock crime and were interviewed after 10 minutes or 1 week. Interviews consisted of answerable questions in one of three formats (free narrative, cued recall, yes/no), allowing participants to exert more or less control over their answers. Participants' reports showed tradeoffs between accuracy, quantity and precision of information. Depending on the question format, participants maintained high accuracy even at the delayed report either by opting not to answer (yes/no or cued recall) or by providing imprecise answers (cued recall or free narrative). We discuss implications for experimental research, metacognitive theory and the criminal justice system. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relation between level of general knowledge and feeling-of-knowing: An adult age study

Younger and older adults were examined in recall and recognition of factual information varying in datedness. It was found that younger adults performed better for questions related to the time period 1970–1983, while the older adults performed better for questions related to the time period 1930–1950. The subjects also did confidence ratings of their "feeling-of-knowing" of the actual questions. On the basis of the cross-over interaction between age and datedness, the relationship between the level of general knowledge and the ability to monitor the knowledge was investigated. Only minor differences were observed between the graphs describing recall and recognition performance as a function of feeling-of-knowing in the four age by datedness combinations. Thus, the results suggest that the ability to supervise context-free semantic information may be intact despite an inferiority in level of knowledge. Comparisons were made between the results of the present study and those of previous studies on metamemory and episodic remembering.     

Positive and negative effects of physical context reinstatement on eyewitness recall and identification

The impact of context reinstatement (CR) on eyewitness recall and identification was explored in this study. Participants viewed a video of a staged theft and, following a 1‐week interval, were asked to identify the culprit and recall the event in either the same or in a different physical environment. Results suggested that CR enhanced the perceived familiarity of the lineup members, which in turn increased participants' willingness to identify someone in the lineup. Although CR significantly improved facial discrimination and identification accuracy when the target was present, it also increased confidence ratings beyond that warranted by the increase in accuracy. In terms of recall, reinstating the study context improved participants' free recall of both central and peripheral details and cued recall of peripheral details. The results were consistent with a (mis)attribution of familiarity and the outshining hypothesis. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alcohol Intoxication and Metamemory: Little Evidence that Moderate Intoxication Impairs Metacognitive Monitoring Processes

There is minimal research on metacognition in alcohol‐intoxicated participants. Study 1 examined metacognition across sober, intoxicated, and placebo groups, with the intoxicated group's breath alcohol concentration reaching 0.074 g/210 L on average immediately prior to the metacognition task. Participants answered cued recall general knowledge questions and provided confidence ratings and feeling‐of‐knowing judgments. They then completed a recognition (i.e., multiple choice) version of the same task, indicating an answer and a confidence rating for each question. Findings suggest that metacognitive accuracy generally did not vary across intoxication levels, although the control group's retrospective confidence judgments better discriminated between accurate and inaccurate responses than the alcohol groups in the recognition task. Study 2 surveyed academic psychologists about their expectations regarding the relation between alcohol and metacognition. Study 1's results were counter to their expectations, as respondents generally predicted a relation would be present. We discuss the implications for alcohol and memory.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eliciting and comparing false and recovered memories: an experimental approach

We describe an experimental paradigm designed to elicit both recovered and false memories in the laboratory. All participants saw, on a video screen, three critical categorized lists of words mixed in randomly with eighteen filler categorized lists. Those in the blocking condition then had several paper‐and‐pencil tasks that involved only the 18 non‐critical filler lists. An uncued recall test was then given, asking participants to recall all the lists they originally saw on the video screen. Finally, there was a cued recall test that provided category cues for the three critical lists. Substantial memory blocking of critical lists on the uncued test and recovery on the cued recall test was observed in all three experiments. In Experiments 2 and 3, many false and recovered memories were elicited on the cued recall test by including cues for the three critical (forgotten) lists, plus cues for three lists that had never been presented. False memories were distinguishable from truly recovered memories in cued recall by ‘know’ versus ‘remember’ judgements, and by confidence ratings; accurately recovered memories were associated with higher confidence. False and recovered memories could not be discriminated based on recall latency. The results repeatedly show powerful effects of memory blocking and recovery. We also show that recovered and false memories can be elicited within a single experimental procedure, and there may be unique characteristics of each. Although we urge caution in generalizing to false and recovered memories of trauma, we suggest that variations of our comparative memory paradigm may be useful for learning about such phenomena. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Long-term memory in amnesia: cued recall, recognition memory, and confidence ratings

We explored what kind of information is acquired when amnesic patients are able to exhibit significant retention on tests of cued recall and recognition memory. Amnesic patients and control subjects attempted to learn sets of sentences. Memory for the last word in each sentence was tested after 1 hr in the case of the amnesic patients, or after 1 to 2 weeks in the case of (delayed) control subjects. Amnesic patients and (delayed) control subjects performed at similar levels on tests of cued recall and recognition memory. Amnesic patients were just as confident of their correct answers as were control subjects. However, amnesic patients were no more disadvantaged than control subjects when they were cued indirectly by presenting paraphrases of the original sentences. These findings demonstrate that the residual knowledge retained by amnesic patients can be as flexible, as accessible to indirect cues, and as available to awareness as the knowledge retained by (delayed) control subjects.     

Two methods of reducing overconfidence

Prior research has suggested that most people are seriously overconfident in their answers to general knowledge questions. We attempted to reduce over-confidence in each of two separate experiments. In Experiment 1 half of the subjects answered five practice questions which appeared to be difficult. The remaining subjects answered practice problems which appeared to be easy but were actually just as difficult as the other group's practice questions. Within each of these two groups, half of the subjects received feedback on the accuracy of their answers to the practice questions, while the other half received no feedback. All four groups then answered 30 additional questions and indicated their confidence in these answers. The group which had received five apparently “easy” practice questions and then had been given feedback on the accuracy of their answers was underconfident on the final 30 questions. In Experiment 2 subjects who anticipated a group discussion of their answers to general knowledge questions took longer to answer the questions and expressed less overconfidence in their answers than did a control group.     

Choice latency as a cue for children’s subjective confidence in the correctness of their answers

Research with adults indicates that confidence in the correctness of an answer decreases as a function of the amount of time it takes to reach that answer, suggesting that people use response latency as a mnemonic cue for subjective confidence. Experiment 1 extended investigation to 2nd, 3rd and 5th graders. When children chose the answer to general knowledge questions, their confidence in the answer was inversely related to choice latency. However, the strength of the relationship increased with grade, suggesting increased reliance with age on the feedback from task performance. The validity of latency as a cue for the accuracy of the answer also increased with age, possibly contributing to the observed age increase in the extent to which confidence judgment discriminated between correct and wrong answers. Whereas these results illustrate the dependence of metacognitive monitoring on the feedback from control operations, Experiments 2 and 3 examined the idea that control‐based monitoring affects subsequent control operations. When children were free to choose which answers to volunteer under a payoff schedule that emphasized accuracy, they tended to volunteer high‐confidence answers more than low‐confidence answers (Experiment 2) and more short‐latency answers than long‐latency answers (Experiment 3). The latter tendency was again stronger for older than for younger children. The results are discussed in terms of the intricate relationships between monitoring and control processes.