ABSTRACT
Why study performance by the older eyewitness? As one of us wrote recently in another context, “If sheer neglect of a topic can justify its being studied, then surely our question is answered” (Halpern & Bartlett, 2002). The voluminous literature on eyewitness testimony includes many thousands of studies assessing young-adult performance and a growing number of studies (certainly several hundred) assessing performance by children. By contrast, the major journals for work on aging and cognition (e.g., Psychology and Aging, Journal of Gerontology), contain only a sprinkling of articles on aging and eyewitness performance, and the major journals publishing eyewitness research (e.g., Law and Human Behavior, Legal and Criminological Psychology, Applied Cognitive Psychology) contain fewer still.
