Factors affecting EWT: Misleading information

Question 1

Procedure of leading questions

Answer 1

LOFTUS and PALMER (1974)

• P’s (students) watched film clips of car accidents
• after = questions asked about accidents
• in critical (leading) question, P’s asked to describe HOW FAST cars were travelling
• ‘About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other’ > it’s a LQ because ‘hit’ suggests speed of car
• 5 groups of P’s - each given diff VERB in critical Q
• bumped, collided, smashed etc…

Question 2

Findings of leading questions

Answer 2

• verb ‘contacted’ mean estimated speed = 31.8 mph
• verb ‘smashed’ = 40.5 mph
  (the LQ biased the eyewitness recall of an event)

Question 3

what is response-bias explanation

Answer 3

• the wording of question has no real effect on P’s memories, just influences how they decide to answer

Question 4

what is substitution explanation

Answer 4

• wording of LQ actually CHANGES the P’s memory of film clip
• demonstrated because P’s who originally heard ‘smashed’ later were more likely to report seeing broken glass (there wasn’t any) than those who heard ‘hit’
• critical verb altered memory of incident

Question 5

Procedure of post-event discussion

Answer 5

Gabbert et al. (2003) studied P’s in pairs

• each P watched video of same crime but filmed from diff perspectives
• so each P could see elements in the event that the other couldn’t
• eg: only one P could see title of a book being carried by woman
• both P’s then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall

Question 6

Findings of post-event discussion

Answer 6

• 71% of P’s mistakenly recalled aspects of event they didn’t see in film clip but picked up in discussion
• corresponding figure in control group (no discussion) was 0%
  CONCLUSION:
• witnesses often go along with each other to win social approval or they believe the other witnesses are correct and they are wrong
• phenomenon is called ‘memory conformity’

Question 7

Evaluation: Artificial tasks (negative)

Answer 7

loftus and palmer’s exp = couldn’t be applied to real life

• watching clips of accidents = very diff from witnessing REAL accidents
• emotions can have an influence on memory too
• studies that use artificial tasks - tell us little about how LQs affect EWT in cases of real accidents/crimes

Question 8

Evaluation: Individual differences

Answer 8

• older people are less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports
• eg: Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) found ppl from 18-25 y/o and 35-45 y/o were MORE ACCURATE than ppl in group 55-78 y/o
• BUT all age groups = more accurate when identifying ppl of own age group
• studies tend to use younger people