Misleading information and post event discussion (Memory)

Question 1

What is eye witness testimony?

Answer 1

• Psychologists tend to use the term ‘eye witness memory’ instead of ‘testimony’ when carrying out research to test the accuracy of the eye witness testimony.
• It goes through 3 stages:
  1.) The witness encodes into LTM details of the event and the persons involved. Encoding may only be partial and distorted, particularly as most crimes happen very quickly, frequently at night, and sometimes accompanied by rapid, complex and often violent actions.
  2.) The witness retains the information for a long time. Memories may be lost or modified during retention (most forgetting takes place within the first few minutes if a retention interval) and other activities between the encoding retrieval may interfere with the memory itself.
  3.) The witness retrieves the memory from storage. The presence or absence of appropriate retrieval cues or the nature of questioning may significantly affect the accuracy of what is recalled.

Question 2

What is the research to support leading questions?

Answer 2

Loftus and Palmer (1974) car crash study:
Procedure:
- 45 students were shown seven films of different traffic accidents.
- After each film, the participants were given a questionnaire which asked them to describe the accident and then answer a series of specific questions about it.
- There was one critical question: “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”
- One group was given this question.
- The other four groups were given the verbs “smashed”, “collided”, “bumped” and “contacted” in place of the word “hit”.
- This critical question was a leading question as it suggested the answer the participant may give.

Question 3

What was the findings and conclusion to Loftus and Palmers research?

Answer 3

VERB –> MEAN SPEED ESTIMATE
“smashed” –> 40.8
“collided” –> 39.3
“bumped” –> 38.1
“hit” –> 34.0
“contacted” –> 31.8

Question 4

What is the GRAVE evaluation to Loftus and Palmers study?

Answer 4

G - Cannot be generalised –> Only tested on students
R - Reliable –> lab studies, if repeated, it can be done again.
V - Not that valid –> Quite subjective, artificial results (fake car crashes.)

Question 5

Why do leading questions affect eye witness testimony?

Answer 5

• The response-bias explanation suggests that the wording of the question has no real effect on the participants’ memories, but just influences how they decide to answer.
• When a participant gets a leading question using the word smashed, this encourages them to choose a higher speed estimate.

Question 6

What is a second experiment in order to test for an explanation for why leading questions affect eye witness testimony?

Answer 6

Loftus and Palmer (Second experiment):
- Proposes that the wording of a leading question changes the participant’s memory of the film clip.
- This was shown because participants who originally heard smashed were later more likely to report seeing broken glass (there was none) than those who had hit.
- The critical verb altered their memory of the incident.

Question 7

What are the advantages of misleading information as a factor which affects eye witness testimony?

Answer 7

• Real world application –> the research has been applied to the criminal justice system which relies wearily on eyewitness identification for investigating and prosecuting crimes. Research has been used to warn the justice system of problems with eye witness identification evidence.

Question 8

What are the disadvantages of misleading information as a factor which affects eye witness testimony?

Answer 8

• Demand characteristics –> supporting research is often conducted in a lab setting. This may lead to demand characteristics as participants want to be helpful. They therefore guess when they are asked to answer a question that they do not know the answer to.
• Opposing research : Yuille and Cutshall
  –> Witnesses to an armed robbery in Canada gave very accurate reports of the crime four months after the event, even though they had initially bee given two misleading questions. –> This suggests that misleading information may have less influence on a real life eye witness testimony.

Question 9

How may memory of the event also be altered?

Answer 9

• The memory of the event may also be altered or contaminated through discussing events with others and/or being questioned multiple times.
• Cowitnesses may reach a consensus view of what actually happened.

Question 10

What is source monitoring theory?

Answer 10

• Memory error occurs when a person attempts to identify where the memory originated from.

Question 11

What is conformity theory?

Answer 11

• Social influence affecting a persons perspective, they change their perceptions of an event to match those held by groups to which they belong.

Question 12

What is the research to support post event discussion?

Answer 12

Gabbert et al (2003):
- Participants were in pairs where each partner watched a different video of the same event so that they each viewed unique items.
- Pairs in one condition were encouraged to discuss the event before each partner individually recalled the event they watched.

Question 13

What were the findings to Gabbert et al’s study?

Answer 13

• A very high number of witnesses (71%) who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall items acquired during the discussion.
• In conclusion, the results show that if witnesses discuss what they saw prior to testimonies, their testimonies can be altered and inaccurate.