Eye Witness Testimony

Question 1

What was the Aim and Procedure of Loftus + Palmer’s study?

Answer 1

To see if post-event misleading information affects accuracy of recall of an event.
- The event was witnessing a car accident and the post event information was the style of wording of questions used.

• In a lab experiment, 45 students were shown 7 films of different traffic accidents.
• Immediately after each film the participants were given one of five questionnaires.
• Only one word was altered in the different questionnaires. The critical question was:
  ‘How fast were the cars going when they BLANKED each other?’
  The words in the blank spaced were:
  smashed, collided, bumped, hit, and contacted.

Question 2

What were the conclusions?

Answer 2

• Post-event information can affect the accuracy of memory, in this case leading questions.
  -The form of questions to eyewitnesses can have a significant effect on the accuracy of a witness’s answer.
• Hence, EWT may be unsound and this has great implications for all organizations that use EWT.
• After an event, information may permanently change the way in which they might attempt to fill in the gaps to make sense of the situation.
• This results in a ‘new’ memory being created and this new
  memory may then be permanently stored as it had really happened.

Question 3

How does Misleading Information affect EWT?

Answer 3

Loftus (1979) – Memories may stay accurate even with misleading information at the time of coding.
- Ps were shown a series of pictures of a man stealing a red wallet
from a woman’s bag.
- Despite being given a wrong description of the wallet as brown,
98% identified the colour correctly.
- Hence, we may have good recall for important information, and that recall of such information may not be distorted even by
misleading information.

Question 4

A03 - Lab Based Research

Answer 4

A limitation of many studies into post-event information Loftus and Palmer (1974) is that the research is predominantly lab-based, which use artificial tasks in artificial settings
- This means that watching eg, a video of a crash a robbery would potentially yield less emotional arousal and surprise that a real
event would bring.
- There is also a lack of consequences for the responses, which may lead to confounded recall.
- Hence, whilst these studies are highly controlled and standardised,
their applicability and generalisability to real cases may be limited.

Question 5

A03 - Usefulness

Answer 5

• The criminal justice system relies heavily on eyewitness identification for investigating and prosecuting crimes.
• Psychological research has been used to warn the justice systems of
  problems with inaccurate eyewitness identification evidence.
• Hence, the research that Loftus and Palmer (1974) conducted was pioneering for its time and has helped to steer legislation.
• For instance, in 1976 The Devlin Report concluded that suspects cannot be convicted on EWT alone, and the innocence project has helped to overturn incorrect convictions, which have been predominantly based upon EWT, confirming the usefulness of research into EWT.