The effect of feedback and recollection rejection instructions on the development of memory monitoring and accuracy.

Recollection rejection (a form of memory monitoring) involves rejecting false details on the basis of remembering true details (recall to reject), thereby increasing memory accuracy. This study examined how recollection rejection instructions and feedback affect memory accuracy and false recognition in 5-year-olds, 6- and 7-year-olds, 8- and 9-year-olds, and adults. Participants (N = 336) completed three study-test phases. Instructions and item-level feedback were manipulated during the first two phases, with the third phase including a test containing no instructions or feedback to evaluate learning effects. As predicted, in the younger children, as compared with the older children and adults, we found reduced accuracy scores (hits to studied items minus false alarms to related lures), reduced recollection rejection to related lures, and increased false recognition scores. We also found that, in the third phase, prior feedback reduced false recognition scores, potentially by improving monitoring, and typical developmental differences in false recognition were eliminated. However, there were mixed findings of instructions and feedback, and in some conditions these interventions harmed memory. These findings provide initial evidence that combining instructions and feedback with repeated task practice may improve monitoring effectiveness, but additional work is needed on how these factors improve and sometimes harm performance in young children.

Children's Use of Memory Editing Strategies to Reject Source Misinformation.

This is the first reported study of children's use of two metacognitive strategies, recollection rejection and diagnostic monitoring, to reject misinformation. Recollection rejection involves the retrieval of details that disqualify an event, whereas diagnostic monitoring involves the failure to retrieve expected details. First (n = 56, age 7 years) and third graders (n = 52, age 9 years) witnessed a staged classroom interaction involving common and bizarre accidents, were presented with misinformation about the source of these events, and took a memory test. Both age groups used recollection rejection, but third graders were more effective. There was little evidence that diagnostic monitoring influenced responses for bizarre events, potentially because these events were not sufficiently bizarre in the context of the stereotype induction.

Effects of feedback and test practice on recollection and retrieval monitoring: comparing first graders, third graders, and adults.

We tested the effects of repeated testing and feedback on recollection accuracy in first graders, third graders, and adults. All participants studied a list of words and pictures, and then took three recollection tests, with each test probing different words and pictures from the earlier study phase. On the first and third tests no feedback was given, whereas on the second test, some subjects received item-level feedback throughout the recollection test. Recollection confusion scores declined across successive tests in all age groups. However, explicit feedback did not improve recollection accuracy or reduce recollection confusions in any age group. We also found that all age groups were able to use picture recollections in a disqualifying monitoring strategy without task experience or feedback. As a whole, these findings suggest that children and adults can use some aspects of retrieval monitoring without feedback or practice, whereas other aspects of retrieval monitoring can benefit from test practice in children and adults. We discuss the potential roles of metacognitive learning and unintended social feedback on these test practice effects.

Search efforts and face recognition: the role of expectations of encounter and within-person variability in prospective person memory.

People perform poorly at sighting missing and wanted persons in simulated searches due to attention and face recognition failures. We manipulated participants' expectations of encountering a target person and the within-person variability of the targets' photographs studied in a laboratory-based and a field-based prospective person memory task. We hypothesized that within-person variability and expectations of encounter would impact prospective person memory performance, and that expectations would interact with within-person variability to mitigate the effect of variability. Surprisingly, low within-person variability resulted in better performance on the search task than high within-person variability in Experiment one possibly due to the study-test images being rated as more similar in the low variability condition. We found the expected effect of high variability producing more hits for the target whose study-test images were equally similar across variability conditions. There was no effect of variability in Experiment two. Expectations affected performance only in the field-based study (Experiment two), possibly because performance is typically poor in field-based studies. Our research demonstrates some nuance to the effect of within-person variability on search performance and extends existing research demonstrating expectations affect search performance.

The effect of pre-event instructions on eyewitness identification.

Research on eyewitness identification often involves exposing participants to a simulated crime and later testing memory using a lineup. We conducted a systematic review showing that pre-event instructions, instructions given before event exposure, are rarely reported and those that are reported vary in the extent to which they warn participants about the nature of the event or tasks. At odds with the experience of actual witnesses, some studies use pre-event instructions explicitly warning participants of the upcoming crime and lineup task. Both the basic and applied literature provide reason to believe that pre-event instructions may affect eyewitness identification performance. In the current experiment, we tested the impact of pre-event instructions on lineup identification decisions and confidence. Participants received non-specific pre-event instructions (i.e., "watch this video") or eyewitness pre-event instructions (i.e., "watch this crime video, you'll complete a lineup later") and completed a culprit-absent or -present lineup. We found no support for the hypothesis that participants who receive eyewitness pre-event instructions have higher discriminability than participants who receive non-specific pre-event instructions. Additionally, confidence-accuracy calibration was not significantly different between conditions. However, participants in the eyewitness condition were more likely to see the event as a crime and to make an identification than participants in the non-specific condition. Implications for conducting and interpreting eyewitness identification research and the basic research on instructions and attention are discussed.

Prior experience with target encounter affects attention allocation and prospective memory performance.

We examined how prior experience encountering targets affected attention allocation and event-based prospective memory. Participants performed four color match task blocks with a difficult, but specified prospective memory task (Experiment 1) or an easier, but unspecified prospective memory task (Experiment 2). Participants were instructed to search for targets on each block. Participants in the prior experience condition saw targets on each block, participants in the no prior experience condition only saw targets on the fourth block, and, in Experiment 2, participants in the mixed prior experience condition encountered some of the targets on the first three blocks, and saw all the targets on the fourth block. In Experiment 1, participants in the no prior experience condition were less accurate at recognizing targets and quicker to respond on ongoing task trials than participants in the prior experience condition. In Experiment 2, we replicated the effect of prior experience on target accuracy, but there was no effect on ongoing trial response time. The mixed experience condition did not vary from the other conditions on either dependent variable, but their target accuracy varied in accordance with their experience. These findings demonstrate that prospective memory performance is influenced by experience with related tasks, thus extending our understanding of the dynamic nature of search efforts across related prospective memory tasks. This research has implications for understanding prospective memory in applied settings where targets do not reliably occur such as baggage screenings and missing person searches.

Effects of distance on face recognition: implications for eyewitness identification.

Eyewitnesses sometimes view faces from a distance, but little research has examined the accuracy of witnesses as a function of distance. The purpose to the present project is to examine the relationship between identification accuracy and distance under carefully controlled conditions. This is one of the first studies to examine the ability to recognize faces of strangers at a distance under free-field conditions. Participants viewed eight live human targets, displayed at one of six outdoor distances that varied between 5 and 40 yards. Participants were shown 16 photographs, 8 of the previously viewed targets and 8 of nonviewed foils that matched a verbal description of the target counterpart. Participants rated their confidence of having seen or not having seen each individual on an 8-point scale. Long distances were associated with poor recognition memory and response bias shifts.