Forgetting Flashcards
Misleading information can distort eyewitness accounts Outline a study investigating this claim.
Loftus and Palmer used opportunity sampling to gather 45 students for a lab experiment with five conditions. Pp’s were shown slides of a car accident and were asked leading questions about how fast the cars were going when they contacted/hit/bumped/collided/smashed.
What did Loftus and Palmer find in their investigation on misleading eyewitnesses?
That the the verb used in the leading questions had affected the participants answers regarding how fast the cars were travelling.
The lab study by Loftus and Palmer was replicable as it was a lab study, what issues were there with the study?
Ecological validity of the experiment. Eyewitnesses in real life events experience much greater emotional impact. The sample involved students that may not drive yet.
During a state of anxiety we focus on what makes us anxious and exclude other information. If a weapon is used, the victim focuses on the weapon as it produces pronounced anxiety. Name two studies that investigated this.
Clifford and Scott
Yuille and Cutshall
What did Clifford and Scott find about weapon focus?
Clifford and Scott found that people who see a film of a violent attack remember fewer items of information than controls that witness a less stressful situation. This suggests that memory may be even more impaired in real life.
Briefly outline research by Yuille and Cutshall contradicting weapon focus
Yuille and Cutshall asked 13 out of 21 witnesses of real shooting how stressful they were at the time of the incident and this was compared to their testimony. Even months later the witnesses recalled the event clearly and weren’t affected by two leading questions.
What is a limitation with Yuille and Cutshall’s investigation?
The witnesses that were less stressed may have been further away from the event thus were able recall the situation better.
Outline the technique for the classic cognitive interview.
Context reinstatement - details of the environment and emotional state
Order - reversing the order of the events
Perspective - recalling from the perspective of other witnesses
Everything - recalling details that may seem unimportant
The enhanced cognitive interview is found to produce much better results, however, it requires trained officers. How so?
It involves relaxation techniques, comments to clarify statements and adapts questions to suit the understanding.
Outline a study into the effectiveness of the cognitive interview.
Geiselman studied interviews which used the standard interview used by the lapd, the cognitive interview and hypnosis. It was found that the cognitive interview produced the most amount of correctly recalled facts whilst the hypnosis was more effective than the standard interview.
