High Confidence Eyewitness Memory Errors in Older Adults

老年人的高置信度目击者记忆错误

• 批准号: 0925145
• 负责人: Chad Dodson
• 金额: $ 32.36万
• 依托单位: University of Virginia Main Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-08-01 至 2013-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0925145&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Confidence; Eyewitness; Memory; Errors; Older

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) (Public Law 111-5).Confident but mistaken eyewitness testimony is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. Recent published research by the investigator suggests that older adults are particularly prone to make high confidence memory errors in a variety of tasks, including tests of eyewitness memory. This project investigates this age-related increase in high-confidence errors with two series of studies. The first series focuses on suggestibility errors, that is, instances in which persons assert that they have actually encountered an event that has only been suggested to them. These studies examine: 1) the generality of the age-related increase in suggestibility errors in a more ecologically-valid paradigm; 2) whether older adults can resist making high confidence suggestibility errors when the source of the suggested information has been discredited; and 3) whether distractibility at encoding is a mechanism that contributes to making errors with high confidence. The second series of studies focuses on memory for faces, as assessed with a lineup identification test. This series examines: 1) the hypothesis that older adults are prone to make high confidence false lineup identifications; and 2) whether the vulnerability to making high confidence errors persists regardless of the strength of older adults' memory for the target face (i.e., it is not a consequence of older adults' poor memory). The need for this research is particularly important given that (1) older adults will comprise an increasing proportion of the US population: from 12% of the population in 2000 to an estimated 20% in 2030; and (2) despite the aging of society and the large amount of research on eyewitness memory, relatively little research has investigated the eyewitness memory of older adults.

该奖项根据《2009 年美国复苏和再投资法案》(ARRA)（公法 111-5）提供资金。自信但错误的目击者证词是错误定罪的主要原因之一。 研究人员最近发表的研究表明，老年人在各种任务中特别容易出现高置信度记忆错误，包括目击者记忆测试。 该项目通过两个系列的研究调查了与年龄相关的高置信度错误的增加。 第一个系列重点关注暗示性错误，即人们断言他们实际上遇到了仅向他们暗示的事件的情况。 这些研究检验：1）在更生态有效的范式中，与年龄相关的暗示性错误增加的普遍性； 2）当建议信息的来源受到怀疑时，老年人是否可以抵制犯高置信度的建议性错误； 3）编码时的注意力分散是否是一种导致高置信度错误的机制。 第二系列研究的重点是面孔记忆，通过阵容识别测试进行评估。 本系列研究：1）老年人容易做出高置信度的错误阵容识别的假设； 2）无论老年人对目标面部的记忆强度如何，犯高置信度错误的脆弱性是否仍然存在（即，这不是老年人记忆力差的结果）。 这项研究的必要性尤其重要，因为 (1) 老年人在美国人口中所占的比例将越来越大：从 2000 年的 12% 增加到 2030 年估计的 20%； (2)尽管社会老龄化，对目击者记忆的研究也很多，但对老年人目击者记忆的研究相对较少。