EWT: misleading info Flashcards
Eye witness testimony
The ability of people to remember the details of events such as accidents, crimes they themselves observed.
what affects EWT
Misleading information, leading Qs and anxiety and Post event discussion
Misleading Information
Incorrect info given to the eyewitness usually after the event occured
Post event discussion
Occurs when there is more than one witness to an event. Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses. May influence the accuracy of each witnesses recall
who conducted research on the effect of leading questions
Loftus and Palmer
Procedure (Loftus and Palmer)
PPTs had to watch film clips of car accidents and gave them questions about the accident. They asked a leading question to the ppts such as “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other”. This is a Leading Q because the verb ‘hit’ suggest the speed of the car.
5 Groups
Each given different verb in the leading question
Hit, Contacted, Bumped, collided, smashed
Findings of Loftus and Palmers study
The mean estimated speed was calculated for each verb and the Verb contacted had a estimated speed of 31.8mph while smashed had 40.5mph Shows that the leading Question biased the eyewitness recall of an event.
What two explanations explain the effect of leading questions on EWT
Response Bias explanation
Substitution explanation
Response bias explanation
Wording of the question has no real effect on the ppts memories but just influences how they decide to answer. E.g. smash encourages ppts to choose higher speed estimates.
Substitution explanation
The wording of a leading question can change the ppts memory. When Loftus and Palmer repeated their exp ppts who originally heard the smashed later reported seeing broken glass even when there was none than those that heard hit. The critical verb altered their memory of the incident.
Who researched into Post event discussion
Gabbert et al
Procedure of Gabberts study
Studied ppts in pairs. Each ppt watched a video of the same crime but at different angles. Each ppt saw elements in the event that the others could not. Both ppts then discussed what they had seen before completing a test of recall
Findings of Gabbert et al
71% of ppts mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up in the discussion(memory contamination). In control group where there was no discussion it was 0%. She concluded that witnesses go along with each other to win social approval or they believe they are wrong and other witness is right. She called this memory conformity
