Eyewitness testimony: misleading information

Question 1

Loftus & Palmer (1974)

Answer 1

Watching a video of a car crash, the critical question involved asking them how fast the cars were travelling when they smashed into each other.
Words that replaced smashed: bumped, collided, hit and contacted.
FINDINGS: smashed at the highest estimate of 41mph

Question 2

Gabbert et al (2003) - post event discussion

Answer 2

found that 71% of participants mistakenly recalled some information that they had received in the discussion that was not in the film they watched.

Question 3

Evaluation strength: good applicability

Answer 3

Loftus’ studies have shown us that EWT is unreliable - something that has reduced the likelihood of people being put in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.

Question 4

Evaluation strength: high internal validity

Answer 4

controlled lab

Question 5

evaluation weakness: lacks ecological validity

Answer 5

Yuille & Cutshall (1986) found that 13 eye witnesses still gave accurate accounts of an armed robbery four months after it occurred even though they were asked misleading questions.

Question 6

Evaluation weakness: individual differences

Answer 6

older people are more prone to misleading post event information as they are more likely to misremember the source of the information.