eye witness testimony - misleading informantiom

Question 1

research on leading questions Loftus and Palmer procedure

Answer 1

45 students watch clips of car accident

leading question was asking how fast the cars were travelling

five groups - each was given a different verb

hit
contacted
bumped
collided
smashed

Question 2

research on leading questions Loftus and Palmer - findings

Answer 2

mean estimated speed was calculated for each group

contacted - 31.8mph
smashed - 40.5mph

leading questions biased the eyewitness recall of events

Question 3

how do leading questions affect EWT

Answer 3

response bias explanation suggests that the wording of the question has no real effect on the memories but just influences how they decide to answer

Loftus and Palmer conducted a second experiment that supported the substitution explanation

proposes that the wording of a leading question changes the participants memory

participants who originally heard smashed were later more likely to report seeing broken glass when there was none

Question 4

research on post event discussion - Gabbert et al procedure

Answer 4

Gabbert et al studied participants in pairs

watched the same crime video but at different angels

both participants then discussed what they had seen before individual completing a test of recall

Question 5

research on post event discussion - Gabbert findings

Answer 5

found that 71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects they didn’t see but picked up in discussion

where there was no discussion - 0%

evidence of memory conformity - contamination

Question 6

why does post event discussion affect EWT

Answer 6

memory contamination

when cowitnesses to a crime discuss with each other their eyewitness testimonies may be altered or distorted

because they combine misinformation from other witnesses with their own memories - memory vonformity

gabbert eat al concluded that witnesses often go along with each other to win social approval or because they believe the other withesses are right and they are wrong

Question 7

give one strength

Answer 7

real world application

has important practical uses in the criminal justice system

consequences of inaccurate ewt can be very serious

loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory

police officer need to be careful how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses

psychologists are sometimes asked to act as expert witnesses in court trials and explain the limits of ewt to juries

shows that psychologists can help to improve the way the legal system works

especially by protecting innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable ewt

Question 8

give a limitation

Answer 8

evidence against substitution

substitution explanation is that ewt is more accurate for some aspects of an event than for others

example - sutherland and hayne showed participants a video clip

when participants were later asked misleading questions their recall was recall was more accurate for central details rather than peripheral ones

participants attention was focused on centeral features of the event and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading information

suggests that the original memories for centeral details survived and were not distorted

outcome that is not predicted by the substitution explanation

Question 9

give a limitation

Answer 9

evidence challenging memory conformity

memory conformity explanation is evidence that post event discussion actually alters ewt

skagerberg and wright showed their participants film clips

there were two versions ( muggers hair was dark brown in one but light brown in the other )

participants discussed the clips in pairs each having seen different versions

often did not report what they had seen in the clips or what they had heard from the co witnesses

but a blend of the two

suggests that the memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading post event discussion rather than the result of memory conformity