Factors affecting EWT: Misleading info Flashcards
What are the 2 factors that can cause misleading info?
Leading questions,
Post-event discussion.
What are leading questions?
A question that suggests a certain answer because of the way that it is phrased.
Who investigated leading questions?
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
What was the procedure for Loftus and Palmer’s study?
Ppts watched a film clip of a car accident. They were then asked questions about the incident.
What was the leading/critical question?
‘about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’
How many groups of ppts were there?
What were they all given?
5
A different verb.
What were the 5 verbs?
Hit. collided, smashed, contacted and bumped.
What were the findings of Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) study?
What did the leading question do?
The verb smashed got he highest mean estimated speed of 40.5mph and the verb contacted got the lowest mean estimated speed of 31.8mph.
The leading question biased the eyewitness recall of the event.
What are the 2 explanations as to why leading questions affect EWT?
The response-bias explanation.
the substitution explanation.
What does the response-bias explanation suggest about the leading questions?
The explanation suggests that the wording of the question has no effect on the ppts memories, but just influence how they decide to answer.
For example, when a ppt gets asked a leading question using the word smashed, it encourages them to choose a higher speed estimate.
What does the substitution explanation suggest about leading questions?
Loftus and Palmer conducted a 2nd experiment that supported this explanation.
The wording of the question actually changes the ppts memory of the film clip. This is demonstrated because ppts who originally heard smashed later were more likely to report seeing broken glass than those who heard hit.
the critical verb altered their memory of the event.
What is post-event discussion?
When co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other after.
Why is post-event discussion bad?
It’s bad as they could combine (mis)information from other witnesses with their own memories.
Resulting in their EWT being contaminated.
Who researched into EWT?
Gabbert et al. (2003)
What was the procedure of Gabbert et al. research into post-event discussion?
They studied ppts in pairs. Each ppt in a pair watched a different clip of the crime, but they were from different POVs.
This meant that each ppt could see elements in the event that the other could not.
Both ppts then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall.
