Judging the accuracy of children's recall: a statement-level analysis

Three experiments were conducted to examine fact finders' judgments of children's answers to cued recall questions about a recent dental visit. Participants performed better than chance at judging the correctness of the children's answers in all 3 experiments, and judgment accuracy was consistently better when the children's answers were correct. Judgment performance did not decline when confidence information was removed, and when all confidence information was removed, the best performance was obtained by parents and by professionals who work with children. The findings of these experiments provide support for the use of written transcripts in presentations of child testimony and highlight the importance of child- and event-related knowledge in judgments of children's testimony.