Loftus and palmer

Question 1

Methodology and procedures?

Answer 1

• methodology that was used was a Lab study
• both of the studies use independent groups design
• The independent variable in both of the experiments was too change the verb that was used
• The dependent variable in experiment 1 was the estimate of the speed
• it has the same dependent variable but what was also measured was whether participants had seen broken glass?

Question 1

How many students were in both of the experiments?

Answer 1

• There were 45 students that were in experiment 1
• There were 150 students that were in experiment 2

Question 2

what were the procedures that were used in experiment 1?

Answer 2

1) shown 7 film clips of different traffic accidents - length of the film segments were 5-30 seconds - made from a driver safety film
2) after each clip they then received a questionnaire and were asked to give an account on what they had just seen, also asked a series of specific questions about the accident - among the questions there was one critical question which they asked the participants “How fast cars were going when they each other?”
3) the verbs were changed too smashed,collided,bumped, contacted
3) participants were then asked to give a speed estimate in each group which were recorded in miles per hour

Question 3

What were the procedures of experiment 2?

Answer 3

• 150 participants were shown a clip of a multiple car crash - when they had watched the video they were asked to then describe this accident
• then they were sked about the speed of the cars - 50 participants were asked “how fast were the cars going when they smashed into eachother?”
• another 50 participants were asked the same question but with the word hit replacing the word smashed - final 50 were not asked about the speed of the cars - week later they were asked questions about the accident - the critical question was “did you see any broken glass?” - there was no broken glass within the video clip

Question 4

what were the findings of experiment 1?

Answer 4

• mean speed was calculated for each experimental group - the group that was given the word “smashed” estimated a higher speed than the other groups of 40.8. The group given the word “contacted” had estimated the lowest speed - 31.8

Question 5

What were the findings of experiment 2?

Answer 5

• participants gave a higher speed estimation in the “smashed” condition like experiment 1
• participants returned a week later and answered further questions about the film accident -participants in the “smashed” condition were more than twice as likely to report seeing broken glass than those in the group given the word “hit” in the controlled condition
  group 1(“smashed” condition”) 16 reported having seen broken glass - 34 reported not having seen broken glass
  group 2(“hit” condition) 7 reported as seen broken glass - 43 reported not have seen broken glass
  group 3(controlled condition - did not get asked the question) 6 reported having seen broken glass - 44 reported not having seen broken glass

Question 6

What were the conclusions for experiment 1?

Answer 6

• Loftus and Palmer had come up with two intepretations for experiment 1
• first one is response bias (misleading information may have influenced the answer a person gave) but did not lead to a false memory of the event.
• The second one is that the memory reperesentation is altered ( the critical verb changes the persons perception of the accident) the perception is then stored in a person’s memory of the event
• to find this out Loftus and Palmer then conducted an experiment 2

Question 7

What were the conclusions of experiment 2?

Answer 7

• Experiment 2 suggests that the leading question alters the participants memory
• Therefore, it is not a response bias but the altering of a participants memory
• The leading questions is combined with the original memory of the accident to create a new memory
• The new memory has cars going faster and so explains why more people say yes when asked about broken glass in the smashed condition