Probing the origins of subjective confidence in source memory decisions in young and older adults: A sequential sampling account.

Subjective confidence is an important factor in our decision making, but how confidence arises is a matter of debate. A number of computational models have been proposed that integrate confidence into sequential sampling models of decision making, in which evidence accumulates across time to a threshold. An influential example of this approach is the relative balance of evidence hypothesis, in which confidence is determined by the amount of evidence for the choice that was made compared to the evidence for all possible choices.

A comparison between numeric confidence ratings and verbal confidence statements.

Is confidence most diagnostic of accuracy when expressed in numbers or when expressed in words? This question bears immense importance in many real-world contexts especially within the confines of eyewitness identification. In an eyewitness identification task, we compared the diagnostic value of numeric confidence across rating scales that varied in grain size (3-point vs. 6-point vs.

Comparing human evaluations of eyewitness statements to a machine learning classifier under pristine and suboptimal lineup administration procedures.

Recent work highlights the ability of verbal machine learning classifiers to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate recognition memory decisions (Dobbins, 2022; Dobbins & Kantner, 2019; Seale-Carlisle, Grabman, & Dodson, 2022). Given the surge of interest in these modeling techniques, there is an urgent need to investigate verbal classifiers' limitations - particularly in applied contexts such as when police collect eyewitness's confidence statements. We find that confirmatory feedback (e.

Unskilled, underperforming, or unaware? Testing three accounts of individual differences in metacognitive monitoring.

Many studies show that competence (e.g., skill, expertise, natural ability) influences individuals' capabilities of monitoring their item-level performance.

Eyewitness confidence and mock juror decisions of guilt: A meta-analytic review.

Objective: We investigated the impact of eyewitness confidence on the following dependent variables: (a) guilty or not-guilty verdict; (b) judgments of guilt as measured on a scale; and (c) mock jurors' perception of the accuracy of an eyewitness's identification. In addition, we examined two potential moderators of the effects of eyewitness confidence: (a) whether the eyewitness expressed confidence at trial versus during the initial lineup identification and (b) whether the eyewitness provided a numerical versus a verbal statement of confidence.

Hypotheses: We expected all analyses to reveal that highly confident eyewitnesses are more persuasive to mock jurors than are eyewitnesses with lower confidence (Hypothesis 1).

The language of accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses.

This article uses machine-learning techniques to examine people's use of verbal expressions of confidence. Across the field of academic psychology, it is often assumed that such statements reflect the same underlying information as numeric confidence ratings. We show that verbal confidence is not redundant with numeric confidence but instead contributes unique diagnostic value in predicting the accuracy of a response.

Improving the interpretation of verbal eyewitness confidence statements by distinguishing perceptions of certainty from those of accuracy.

When an eyewitness makes an identification from a lineup, police are also instructed to collect a verbal expression of confidence. This recommendation hinges on the assumption that evaluators will perceive confidence in the manner the witness intended. However, research has consistently shown that these interpretations can be biased by accompanying contextual information.

A decision processes account of the differences in the eyewitness confidence-accuracy relationship between strong and weak face recognizers under suboptimal exposure and delay conditions.

When pristine testing conditions are used, an eyewitness's high-confidence identification from a lineup can be a reliable predictor of their identification accuracy (Wixted & Wells, 2017). Further, Grabman, Dobolyi, Berelovich, and Dodson (2019) found that high-confidence identifications are more predictive of accuracy for individuals with stronger than weaker face recognition ability. We extend this research by investigating why strong face recognizers make more informative confidence judgments and fewer high-confidence errors through the framework of two different accounts: the optimality account (Deffenbacher, 1980) and the decision processes account (e.

SUAG/on across the adult lifespan.

One of the central concepts within the literature on cognitive aging is the notion of dedifferentiation-the idea that increasing age is associated with an increase in the interrelatedness of different cognitive abilities. Despite the centrality of this dedifferentiation hypothesis, there is a great deal of evidence that both supports and does not support dedifferentiation. We hypothesized that these inconsistent findings were due to (a) the use of different cognitive abilities (i.

Actual vs. perceived eyewitness accuracy and confidence and the featural justification effect.

This article documents a contradiction between objective eyewitness accuracy and perceived eyewitness accuracy. Objectively, eyewitness identification accuracy (and the confidence-accuracy relationship) is comparably strong when a lineup identification is accompanied by a justification that refers to either an observable feature about the suspect ("I remember his eyes"), an unobservable feature ("He looks like a friend of mine") or just a statement of recognition ("I recognize him"). There is, however, a weaker relationship between confidence and accuracy and an increase in high confidence errors for identifications that are accompanied by references to familiarity than by references to any other type of justification.

Misinterpreting eyewitness expressions of confidence: The featural justification effect.

How do we know eyewitness statements of confidence are interpreted accurately by others? When eyewitnesses provide a verbal expression of confidence about a lineup identification, such as I'm fairly certain it's him, how well do others understand the intended meaning of this statement of confidence? And, how is this perception of the meaning influenced by justifications of the level of confidence, such as when eyewitnesses say, I remember his chin? The answers to these questions are unknown, as there is no research on how others interpret the intended meaning of eyewitness confidence. Three experiments show that an additional justification of confidence, relative to seeing a confidence statement alone, can increase misunderstanding in others' estimation of the meaning of the expression of confidence. Moreover, this justification-induced increase in misunderstanding only occurs when the justification refers to an observable facial feature and not when it refers to an unobservable quality (e.

Aging, confidence, and misinformation: recalling information with the cognitive interview.

In 2 experiments, younger and older adults witnessed a simulated robbery, received misleading information about the event, and then were interviewed with the Cognitive Interview about their memory for the robbery. In both experiments, older adults were disproportionately more confident than younger adults in the accuracy of incorrect information that they recalled than in the accuracy of correct information. Critically, this age-related increase in high-confidence errors occurred even in comparison with younger adults who were matched with older adults on the overall amount and accuracy of the information remembered about the robbery.

Recollection is a continuous process: Evidence from plurality memory receiver operating characteristics.

Is recollection a continuous/graded process or a threshold/all-or-none process? Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis can answer this question as the continuous model and the threshold model predict curved and linear recollection ROCs, respectively. As memory for plurality, an item's previous singular or plural form, is assumed to rely on recollection, the nature of recollection can be investigated by evaluating plurality memory ROCs. The present study consisted of four experiments.

Eyewitness confidence in simultaneous and sequential lineups: a criterion shift account for sequential mistaken identification overconfidence.

Confidence judgments for eyewitness identifications play an integral role in determining guilt during legal proceedings. Past research has shown that confidence in positive identifications is strongly associated with accuracy. Using a standard lineup recognition paradigm, we investigated accuracy using signal detection and ROC analyses, along with the tendency to choose a face with both simultaneous and sequential lineups.

Negative prospective memory: remembering not to perform an action.

Sometimes it is important to remember not to perform an action, such as remembering to stop taking seasonal allergy medicine when it is no longer needed. Mistakes in accomplishing this goal can involve prospective memory commission errors when individuals mistakenly perform a prospective response. In two experiments, we investigated the role of attentional resources in preventing prospective memory errors to cues that had been associated with a habitual prospective response.

Cross-age effect in recognition performance and memory monitoring for faces.

The cross-age effect refers to the finding of better memory for own- than other-age faces. We examined 3 issues about this effect: (1) Does it extend to the ability to monitor the likely accuracy of memory judgments for young and old faces? (2) Does it apply to source information that is associated with young and old faces? And (3) what is a likely mechanism underlying the cross-age effect? In Experiment 1, young and older adults viewed young and old faces appearing in different contexts. Young adults exhibited a cross-age effect in their recognition of faces and in their memory-monitoring performance for these faces.

Alzheimer's disease and memory-monitoring impairment: Alzheimer's patients show a monitoring deficit that is greater than their accuracy deficit.

We assessed the ability of two groups of patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) and two groups of older adults to monitor the likely accuracy of recognition judgments and source identification judgments about who spoke something earlier. Alzheimer's patients showed worse performance on both memory judgments and were less able to monitor with confidence ratings the likely accuracy of both kinds of memory judgments, as compared to a group of older adults who experienced the identical study and test conditions. Critically, however, when memory performance was made comparable between the AD patients and the older adults (e.

Metamemory development: understanding the role of similarity in false memories.

Research on the development of metamemory has focused primarily on children's understanding of the variables that influence how likely a person is to remember something. But metamemory also involves an understanding of why people occasionally misremember things. In this study, 5- and 6-year-olds (N = 38) were asked to decide whether another child's mistakes in a memory game were due to false memories or guesses.

Stereotypes and retrieval-provoked illusory source recollections.

When expectations and stereotypes are activated at retrieval, they spontaneously create distorted and illusory recollections that are consistent with these expectations. Participants studied doctor (physician)-related and lawyer-related statements that were presented by 2 different people. When informed, on a subsequent source memory test, (i.

Retrieval-based illusory recollections: why study-test contextual changes impair source memory.

Illusory source recollections can be manufactured purely by the conditions at retrieval. At encoding, individuals listened to words spoken by a male or a female voice and later, at retrieval, determined who initially had spoken the test word or whether it was a new word. In Experiment 1, individuals were instructed during the memory test to make a response of male or female only if they clearly recollected the speaker presenting the item during encoding and to respond don't remember otherwise.

When two heads are not better than one: partner neglect in paired memory tasks.

People can monitor the accuracy of their own memories and regulate their responses accordingly. But can they monitor and make use of another person's memory? We document a new phenomenon whereby participants neglect a partner's expertise when deciding whether to defer to that partner's memory or to rely on their own. In two experiments, participants studied images for more time than, less time than, or the same amount of time as a partner, and on subsequent recognition tests they were directed to maximize team performance by either answering themselves or letting their partner respond.

Aging, metamemory, and high-confidence errors: a misrecollection account.

Two experiments showed that older adults were worse than younger adults at judging the accuracy of their responses on source identification (i.e., who said what) and cued-recall tests.

I misremember it well: why older adults are unreliable eyewitnesses.

We used the eyewitness suggestibility paradigm to investigate the hypothesis that cognitive aging is associated with an increase in misrecollections--confidently held but false memories of past events. When younger and older adults were matched on their overall memory for experienced events, both groups showed comparable rates of suggestibility errors in which they claimed to have seen events in a video that had only been suggested in a subsequent questionnaire. However, older adults were--alarmingly--most likely to commit suggestibility errors when they were most confident about the correctness of their response.

Aging, source memory, and misrecollections.

The authors propose an illusory recollection account of why cognitive aging is associated with episodic memory deficits. After listening to statements presented by either a female or a male speaker, older adults were prone to misrecollecting past events. The authors' illusory recollection account is instantiated in a new illusory recollection signal detection model that provides a better fit of older adults' data than does the standard signal detection model.