EYEWITNESS CONFIDENCE AND ACCURACY AMONG 3 AGE COHORTS

The relation between eyewitness confidence and accuracy of 28 young (a ges 18 to 35, M = 21.14), 33 young-old (ages 59 to 74, M = 67.73) and 29 old-old (ages 75 to 94, M = 80.66) persons was examined. After view ing a videotape of an ongoing crime, participants answered a multiple- choice questionnaire about the videotaped events and were asked to ide ntify the suspect from a valid or foil photographic line-up. Confidenc e in each answer was assessed using a 1-10 rating scale. Questionnaire performance declined across age groups but all groups performed poorl y on the line-up task. Confidence and accuracy correlations were not s ignificant for any group; however, confidence ratings were significant ly higher for correct responses than for incorrect responses for all a ge groups. Thus age alone does not determine eyewitness competence.