Cognitive - Eyewitness Testimony - Age

The Own Age Bias: People are more likely to correctly identify people of their own age. 

Parker & Carranza (1989)

Procedure

- Compared primary school children and college students.

- Looked at identifying a target individual following a mock crime.


Findings

- Child witnesses were more likely to chose someone.

- Child witnesses were less accurate.

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Memon et al (2003)

Procedure

- Studied young (16-33), older (60-82) eyewitness accuracy.


Findings
- When the delay between an incident and its identification was short there was no difference in the accuracy of the two age groups.
- 1 week later, younger witnesses were more accurate.

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Yarmey (1993)


Procedure

- Stopped 651 adults in public places and asked them to recall physical characteristics of a woman who they had spoken to 2 minutes earlier.

Findings

- Young (18-29) and middle-aged (30-44) were more confident in recall.
- No significant differences in accuracy of recall that could be attributed to the age group of the witness.

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Anastasi and Rhodes (2006)

Procedure

- 3 age groups, (18-25, 35-45, 55-78) shown 24 photos.
- Rated for attractiveness.
- Filler activity.
- 48 photos presented - 24 had been there previously.

Findings

- Young and middle-aged participants were significantly more accurate than older participants.
- All age groups were good at identifying their own age group.