Does the Circadian Arousal Rhythm Influence the Accuracy of Seniors Eyewitness Testimony?
Lorretta Chung and Dr. Dax Urbszat, University of Toronto Past research has shown that age is positively correlated with cognitive deterioration, where elders were found to perform more poorly on most selective attention tasks (McDowd & Shaw, 2000), working memory tasks (Zacks, Hasher, & Li, 2000), and episodic memory recall (Verhaeghen & Salthouse, 1997). Subsequently, it was found that elderly individuals are typically less accurate and complete in recalling witnessed events than younger adults, particularly in response to leading or suggestive questions (Yarmey & Kent, 1980; List, 1986); thus elders are perceived to be less credible as eyewitnesses. However, recent studies investigating elders’ cognitive functioning revealed that circadian rhythm plays a potent role in elders’ performance in cognitive tasks (May, Hasher, & Stoltzfus, 1993). Individuals cognitively perform the best when their preferred time of day matches the task demands, termed as the synchrony effect. Based on pas
