Harnessing Metacognition to Assess the Accuracy of Memory Reports From Children in the Criminal Justice System, 2021-2024

Children's metacognitive cues can be used to determine the accuracy of the information in their testimony, but existing research using limited measures has not provided a strong basis for informing practice. New advances and the PI's pilot data suggest the potential of this approach can now be realised. A metacognitive cue could be a confidence rating (with high confidence indicating high accuracy), or non-verbal, such as shrugs (indicating low accuracy). We will test children ages 4-5, 7-8, and 10-11, to advance understanding about metacognitive development and determine which cues could be used to assess the likely accuracy of information. For the first time, we will investigate novel metacognitive cues that are likely to be informative of accuracy in younger children, and employ statistical techniques that allow us separately to measure different elements of performance: their memory accuracy and metacognitive ability.

Moreover, there is a gap between metacognitive research and its use in the real-world. We will address this by creating and testing police officer training to improve their ability to assess the accuracy of information from children, by using children's metacognitive cues. We will also work with legal practitioners and other experts to develop recommendations (for practice, policy, and future research), for assessing child memory evidence worldwide.

Our goal is to impact a range of legal decision-makers who are required to assess child memory accuracy, as well as government agencies, policy-makers, and organisations responsible for child protection and victim advocacy. To ensure outcomes are of practical use to these communities, they will guide the project throughout.

Empirical data and coding schemes for child memory and metacognition experiments (recognition and cued recall) and a police training study on how to interpret memory evidence from children.