EWT: Misleading information Flashcards
Outline the procedure in Loftus and Plamers (1974) study.
45 student participants watched film clips of a car accident and then answered questions about speed. Critical question;
‘About how fast were the cars going when they hit eachother’
Five groups participated, each group was givena different verb in the critical question:
hit,contacted,bumped,collided,smashed
Outline the findings in Loftus and Plamers (1974) study.
The verb contacted produced a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph. For the verb smashed, the mean was 40.5mph.
The leading question biased eyewitness recall of an event.The verb smashed suggested a faster speed of the car than contacted.
Why do leading question effect ETW?
Response bias: This is when the wording of a question has no enduring effect on an eyewitness memory of an event, but influences the kind of answers given
Substitution explanation: Wording of a question does affect eyewitness memory, it interferes with the original memory, distorting its accuracy.
Outline the procedure in Gabbert (2003) Post event discussion study.
Paired participants watched a video of the same crime, but filmed so each participant could see elements in the event that the other would not.
Both participants discussed what they had seen on the video before individually completing a test of recall.
Outline the findings in Gabberts study (2003).
71% of participants wrongly recalled aspects of the event they did not see in the video but had heard in the discussion.
In the control group there was no discussion and subsequently no errors.
- This is evdidence of memory confromity
Why does Post event discussion effect EWT?
2 Explanations
Memory contamination: When co-witnesses discuss a crime, they mix information from other witnesses with their own memories.
Memory conformity: Witnesses go along with each other to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right.
What is one strength of the misleading information explanation?
One strength is real world application in the criminal justice system
The consequences of inaccurate EWT are serious. Loftus 1975 argues police officers should be careful in phrasing questionsto witnesses because of distorting effects.
Psychologists are sometimes expert witnesses in trials and explain limits of EWT to juries.
Therefore psychologists can improve how the legal system works and protect the innocent from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT.
What is one limitaton for the EWT explanation?
One limitation of the substitution explantion is evidence challenging it
- Sutherland and Hayne (2001) found their participants recalled central details of an event better than te peripheral ones, even when asked misleading questions.
- This is presumably because their attention was focused on the central features and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading information.
- Therefore the original memory of the event survived and was not distorted, which is not predicted by the substitution explanation.
What is another limitation?
Another limitation is that evidence does not support memory conformity
- Wrights (2008), participants discussed film clips they had seen, in one clip the mugger had dark brown hair and in the other light brown hair.
- The participants recalled a blend of what they had seen and what they had heard from co-witness, rather than one or the other.
- This suggests that the memory itself is distorted through contamination by Post event discussion and is not the result of memory conformity.
