Recent research has shown that incorrect statements in eyewitness testimonies contain more cues to effortful memory retrieval than correct statements. In two experiments, we attempted to improve judgments of testimony accuracy by informing participants about these effort cues. Participants read eyewitness testimony transcripts and judged statement accuracy. Performance was above chance in both experiments, but there was only a significant effect of the effort-cue instruction in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, we also compared judgment accuracy between police detectives, police students and laypersons, and found no significant difference, in contrast to previous studies. Moreover, the current study corroborates previous findings that (a) judging testimony accuracy is a difficult task and (b) people spontaneously rely on effort cues to some extent when judging accuracy. However, a complete reliance on effort cues showed substantially better performance than relying on one's own judgments skills at best, and offered equal performance at worst.

中文翻译：

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使用检索努力线索判断目击者证词的准确性

最近的研究表明，目击者证词中的错误陈述比正确的陈述包含更多的线索，需要努力记忆检索。在两个实验中，我们试图通过告知参与者这些努力线索来提高对证词准确性的判断。参与者阅读目击者证词记录并判断陈述的准确性。两个实验的表现都高于机会，但实验2中只有努力提示教学的显着效果。 在实验1中，我们还比较了警探、警学生和外行之间的判断准确度，没有发现显着差异。与以往的研究相反。而且，当前的研究证实了先前的发现，即（a）判断证词的准确性是一项艰巨的任务，（b）人们在判断准确性时会在一定程度上自发地依赖努力线索。然而，完全依赖努力线索的表现最好比依靠自己的判断技能好得多，而在最坏的情况下表现也相当。