memory- eye witness testimony: misleading information Flashcards
who investigated effect of leading questions?
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Loftus and Palmer (1974) Leading questions: procedure
-45 p’s (students) watched film clips of car accidents and them answered q’s about speed. critical q: ‘about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’
-5 groups of participants, each given a different verb in the critical question: hit, contacted, bumped, collided or smashed.
Loftus and Palmer (1974) Leading questions: findings
-‘contacted’, mean estimate of 31.8mph
-‘smashed’, mean speed of 40.5 mph
Loftus and Palmer (1974) Leading questions: conclusion
-the leading question (verb) biased eyewitness recall of an event
-verb ‘smashed’ suggested a faster speed of the car than ‘contacted’.
Response-bias explanation for leading questions affecting EWT
-wording of q has NO effect on eyewitness’s memory of an event, but influences the kind of answer given.
substitution explanation for leading questions affecting EWT
-wording of q DOES affect eyewitness memory, interferes with the original memory, distorting its accuracy.
Gabbert et al. (2003) Post-event discussion: procedure
-paired p’s watched video of same crime, but filmed so each participant could see elements in the event that the other could not
-both p’s discussed what they had seen on the video before individually completing a test of recall.
Gabbert et al. (2003) Post-event discussion: fixings and conclusions
-71% of p’s wrongly recalled aspects of the event they did not see in the video but heard in the discussion
-evidence of memory conformity
who investigated post-event discussion in EWT?
Gabbert et al. (2003)
Memory contamination for post-event info affecting EWT
-when co-witnesses discuss a crime, they mix (mis) information from other witnesses with their own memories.
Memory conformity for post-event info affecting EWT
Witnesses go along with each other to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right.
ao3 EWT: real-world application in criminal justice system
-consequences of inaccurate EWT are serious. Loftus (1975) argues police officers should be careful in phrasing q’s to witnesses bc of distorting effects
-psychologists sometimes expert witnesses in trial and explain limits of EWT to juries
-so psychologists can improve how the legal system works to prevent innocent from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT
ao3 EWT: CA to real-world application
-Loftus and Palmer showed film clips - a different experience from a real event (less stress).
-p’s are also less concerned about the effect of their responses in a lab study (Foster et al. 1994).
-therefore researchers may be too pessimistic about the effects of misleading information - EWT may be more reliable than studies suggest.
ao3 EWT: evidence challenging the substitution explanation
-Sutherland and Hayne (2001) donut their p’s recalled central details of an event better than peripheral ones, even when asked misleading q’s
-presumably bc attention was focused on central features and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading info
-therefore, original memory of event survived and was not distorted, which is not predicted by the substation explanation
ao3 EWT: evidence does not support memory conformity
-Skagerberg and Wright’s (2008) p’s discussed film clips they’d seen (in one version mugger had dark brown hair other had light brown)
-p’s recalled a ‘blend’ of what they’d seen and what they’d heard from co-witness, rather than one or the other (e.g. said hair was medium brown)
-suggests memory itself is distorted through contamination by post-event discussion and isn’t the result of memory conformity
