Age Differences in Explicit Memory of Crimes and Source Monitoring Ability: Adolescents and Young Adults

In the current study an adolescent sample was compared to a young adult sample on measures of explicit memory and source monitoring. Compared to adolescents, young adults were found to recall significantly more details pertaining to person, object, and surroundings of videotaped staged crimes. There were no significant age differences pertaining to details concerning action for these crimes, implying a developmental component to our ability to recall different aspects of events. The young adult sample was also found to perform better compared to the adolescents on a source monitoring task. Findings are discussed in terms of developmental differences in memory ability and developmental neuroscience. The current study contributes to our knowledge base concerning developmental differences in these cognitive abilities and provides information that may be applied in a forensic setting.