2.4.1 Eye witness testimony and leading questions

Question 1

What is eye witness testimony?

Answer 1

What an eye witness gives to the police to get any evidence or needed information over to them.

Question 2

What are leading questions?

Answer 2

This is a question that suggests or leads to a desired response due to the wording of it.

Question 3

Research into leading questions?

Answer 3

/Loftus and Palmer (1974) - the strength of the verb used in the critical question (e.g. ‘smashed’ as opposed to ‘contacted’) may have led participants to estimate higher speed estimates accordingly i.e. ‘smashed’ elicited higher speed estimates probably because it ‘sounds’ faster
/Yuille and Cutshall (1986) - participants who had been real-life eye witnesses of a shooting were not misled by false information and leading questions

Question 4

Evaluation of research into leading questions?

Answer 4

/Loftus and Palmer (1974) - watching film clips of car crashes is not at all like witnessing a real accident e.g. a lack of emotional/dramatic content; participants all get the same view of the accident rather than seeing it from different vantage points
/Yuille and Cutshall (1986) - this study has high validity as participants were recalling something that they had actually witnessed and manipulation by the researchers did not result in them changing their accounts of what they had seen