Confidence judgments in children's and adult's event recall and suggestibility.

Abstract

The present work investigated the role of children's and adults' metacognitive monitoring and control processes for unbiased event recall tasks and for suggestibility. Three studies were conducted in which children and adults indicated their degree of confidence that their answers were correct after (Study 1) and before (Study 2) answering either unbiased or misleading questions or (Study 3) forced-choice recognition questions. There was a strong tendency for overestimation of confidence regardless of age and question format. However, children did not lack the principal metacognitive competencies when these questions were asked in a neutral interview. Under misleading questioning, in contrast, children's monitoring skills were seriously impaired. Within each age group, better metacognitive differentiation was positively associated with recall accuracy in the suggestive interview.

Receiver operating characteristic analysis of age-related changes in lineup performance

“…Although the size of the rating scale (i.e., number of options) and removal of the 'I don't know' option have not been found to influence older children's observed metacognitive abilities (e.g., Roebers 2002, Roebers & Howie, 2003Roebers von der Linden, & Howie, 2007), additional research is needed to ascertain whether the number of points on the confidence scale affects the shape of the ROC. Additionally, researchers have questioned the appropriateness of comparing confidence judgments made by children to other age groups, as it is unclear if confidence judgments measure the same construct in children and adults (e.g., Roebers, Krebs, & Roederer, 2014).…”

“…Developmental research generally indicates that children starting from around 8 years old are able to effectively monitor the accuracy of recall Roebers, 2002;Roebers & Howie, 2003) and recognition (Hiller & Webber, 2013;Roebers, 2002). …”

“…For children, a piece of card displaying 4 distinct clearly labelled "smiley" faces was presented to children (see Figure 2, adapted from Roebers, 2002). This scale is similar to those implemented in studies where younger and older children have been shown to successfully monitor the accuracy of their reports (e.g., Roebers, 2002;Roebers & Howie, 2003;von der Linden & Roebers, 2006).…”

“…This scale is similar to those implemented in studies where younger and older children have been shown to successfully monitor the accuracy of their reports (e.g., Roebers, 2002;Roebers & Howie, 2003;von der Linden & Roebers, 2006). To ensure that children understood the confidence rating scale a number of example questions were included.…”

“…", and were then asked to indicate how sure they were that their answer was correct by pointing to the appropriate confidence rating (cf. Roebers, 2002). If children did not point to the most appropriate confidence rating, the experimenter showed children the correct confidence rating and provided an explanation for this decision.…”