Adults’ Abilities to Discern Children’s True and False Memories

Abstract

Adults’ evaluations of children’s eyewitness reports can determine whether legal proceedings are undertaken and whether they ultimately lead to justice. The current study involved 92 undergraduates and 35 adult laypersons who viewed and evaluated videotaped interviews with children. The children’s reports fell into the following categories based on a 2 (event type: true vs. false) X 2 (child report: assent vs. denial) factorial design: Accurate reports, false reports, accurate denials, or false denials. Results revealed that adults were generally better able to correctly judge accurate reports and accurate denials compared to false reports and false denials. Of interest, adults’ ratings of false denials indicated that the adults were, on average, “confident” that the event had not occurred, even though the event had in fact been experienced. Adults’ ratings of false reports were more accurate: Adults were, on average, “somewhat confident” the event had not happened. These results underscore the greater difficulty adults had in evaluating false denials compared to other types of reports. Individual-difference factors (e.g., participants’ age) predicted performance. Implications for legal procedures are discussed.