Factors Affecting The Accuracy Of Eyewitness Testimony: Misleading Information Flashcards
What is meant by misleading information?
Anything producing information which may alter someone’s memory on a crime.
What is meant by leading questions?
A querie which suggests a certain answer due to the way its phrased.
Outline Loftus and Palmer’s research on misleading information.
Procedure - made pps watch clips of cars crashing and then asked them questions about the crashes for example, ‘how fast were the cars going?’. The questions were asked using different verbs such as ‘hit’, ‘smash’, ‘contact’ etc.
Findings - when the word ‘smashed’ was used in the question about how fast the cars were going, pps wrote a significantly higher speed than those pps who had ‘contacted’ in their question. A week after watching the crashes, pps were asked whether they saw glass when the cars crashed, 32 percent of pps who had a question with ‘smashed’ said yes compared to only 14 percent of those with ‘contacted’.
What is the response bias explanation in misleading information?
An explanation which suggests the witnesses memory has not changed but the answer has.
What is meant by post-event discussion ?
When there is more than 1 witness to a crime and so multiple witnesses discuss what they saw during the crime scene therefore leading to memory conformity where witnesses pick up incorrect details due to believing those around them are correct.
What is meant by memory contamination?
When testimonies become altered due to post-event discussion - information is combined from other witnesses.
Outline Gabbert et al’s study on post-event discussion.
Procedure - used matched pairs design and showed pairs of pps a clip of the same crime scene but with different details for each member. The pair then engaged in post-event discussion and then completed a test of recall.
Findings -71 percent of inaccurate information was gained through post-event discussion compared to 0 percent of a control group who did not discuss.
What are two limitations of leading questions?
- Research into leading questions often use artificial tasks.
Loftus and Palmer asked pps to watch clips of cars crashing instead of watching a car crash in real life - if pps watched an actual car crash, levels of anxiety would have been much higher. Anxiety may have either had a positive impact on their recall or a negative impact as it is also a factor which impacts the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. This shows that their study lacks mundane realism as the tasks are not reflective of real life and so cannot be generalised to everyday situations. Therefore, the ecological validity of their findings is reduced and so leading questions may have less of an effect in real life than research suggests.
- Unclear why distortion occurs.
Despite Gabbert et al’s research showing us the effect post-event discussion has on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, it is unclear why the memory of individuals ‘changes’. This could be a result of memory conformity where a witness believes that the other witnesses recall the event more accurately and so change their own recall. Or, the distortion could simply result from poor memory where people assimilate new information into their account of the event and are unable to distinguish between what they have seen and what they have heard. Therefore, further research must be conducted to investigate why post-event discussion changes testimonies.
What is one strength of leading questions?
- Real life application
Research shows that police must carefully phrase questions to avoid distorting memory.
Shows this can improve accuracy of EWT.
Therefore, useful implications.
