Factors Impacting EWT: Leading Questions Flashcards
EWT:
The ability of people to remember the details of events, which they themselves have observed.
Misleading Information:
Incorrect information given to the eyewitness usually after the event. It can take many forms, such as leading questions and post-event discussion between co-witnesses and or other people.
Leading question:
A question which, because of the way it is phrased, suggests a certain answer.
Post-event discussion: (PED)
Occurs when there is more than one witness to an event. Witnesses may discuss what they have seen with co-witnesses or with other people. This may influence the accuracy of each witness’s recall of the event.
Loftus and Palmer (1974): Procedure
- Arranged for participants (students) to watch film clips of car accidents and then gave the, questions about the accident.
- In the critical (leading) question they were asked how fast the cars were travelling: ‘About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’
- Five verbs: hit, contacted, bumped, collided and smashed.
Loftus and Palmer (1974): Findings
Means:
1. Contacted: 31.8 mph
2. Smashed: 40.5 mph
add the rest
Response-bias explanation:
The wording of the question has no real effect on the participants’ memories, but influences how they decide to answer.
Substitution explanation:
- Loftus and Palmer (1974) suggested a different explanation.
- The wording of a question changes the pps’ memory of the film clip.
- Participants who heard ‘smashed’ were more likely to report seeing broken glass.
- Critical verb altered the memory of the incident.
Gabbert and colleagues (2003): Procedure
- Studied participants in pairs.
- Each pps watched a video of the same crime filmed from different perspectives. each pps could see elements that other could not.
- For example only one ppt could see the title of the book being carried by the woman.
- Both participants discussed what they had seen before completing a test of recall.
Gabbert and colleagues (2003): Findings
- 71% of pps mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up in the discussion.
- The control with no discussion had 0%.
- Gabbert et al. concluded that witnesses often go along with each other, to win social approval or because they believe they are wrong.
- Memory conformity.
E: Real Life Applications
- Practical uses where the consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious.
- Loftus (1975) believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful about how the ask questions.
- Important positive difference by improving the way the legal system works.
E: Artificial Tasks
- LP study watched film clips of car accidents which is very different from witnessing a real accident, as it lacks the stress of a real accident.
- There is some evidence that emotions can have an influence on memory.
- Studies that use artificial tasks may tell us very little about how leading questions affect EWT in cases of real accidents of crimes.
- Some researchers such as Loftus are too pessimistic.
E: Individual Differences
- Older people may be less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports.
- Anastasi and Rhodes (2006) found that people in age groups 18-25 and 35-45 were more accurate than those in the group 55-78 years.
- All ages groups were more accurate when identifying their own age group (own age bias).
E: Demand Characteristics
- Zaragosa and McCloskey (1989) argue that many answers participants give in lab studies of EWT are the result of demand characteristics.
- Pps usually do not want to let the researcher down and want to appear helpful and attentive, so they may guess the answer just to please them.
