Recent studies suggest that highly confident eyewitnesses are likely to provide highly accurate identification evidence, at least in some conditions. Yet few studies have investigated the confidence-accuracy relationship in witness interviews or exactly when confidence judgments should be taken. Across three experiments, 831 adults answered questions about a mock crime and rated their confidence in each response. Participants gave their confidence immediately after each response or at the end of the memory test. The timing of the confidence judgment did not affect the confidence-accuracy relationship, and the confidence-accuracy relationship remained strong even when participants encoded the event under poor visibility conditions. When participants were unknowingly exposed to misinformation, however, the confidence-accuracy relationship was substantially weakened—participants became highly over-confident in the accuracy of their memories. These findings help to refine the parameters in which witness confidence serves as a useful indicator of memory accuracy.

最近的研究表明，至少在某些情况下，高度自信的目击者可能会提供高度准确的识别证据。然而，很少有研究调查证人面谈中的置信度与准确度的关系，或者确切地何时应该进行置信判断。在三项实验中，831 名成年人回答了有关模拟犯罪的问题，并评估了他们对每个回答的信心。参与者在每次回答后或记忆测试结束时立即表示自信。置信度判断的时机不影响置信度-准确度关系，即使参与者在较差的可见度条件下对事件进行编码，置信度-准确度关系仍然很强。然而，当参与者在不知不觉中接触到错误信息时，置信度与准确度的关系显着减弱——参与者对其记忆的准确性变得高度自信。这些发现有助于改进证人置信度作为记忆准确性的有用指标的参数。