Misleading Information On EWT

Question 0

How many film clips of car crashes did they show the participants?

Answer 0

7

Question 1

Who did the research on the effect of misleading information on eye witnesses?

Answer 1

Loftus and Palmer

Question 2

How many participants did they use in the first study?

Answer 2

45 American students

Question 3

How many groups were the participants divided into in the first study?

Answer 3

5 groups

Question 4

In the first study what did the groups have to do after watching the clips of car crashes?

Answer 4

Make a written account of what they saw and answer a series of questions

Question 5

What question were all groups asked?

Answer 5

Each group were asked a question about the speed of the cars. The question varied by one word for each group implying a different speed (contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed) to see if the misleading information affected the answer that the students gave

Question 6

What was the estimated speed at contacted?

Answer 6

31.8 mph

Question 7

What was the estimated speed at smashed?

Answer 7

40.8 mph

Question 8

What was the estimated speed at bumped?

Answer 8

38.1 mph

Question 9

What was the estimated speed at hit?

Answer 9

34 mph

Question 10

What was the estimated speed at collided?

Answer 10

39.3 mph

Question 11

What are misleading words in order of average speed they gave from lowest to highest?

Answer 11

Contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed

Question 12

What did the first piece of research suggest?

Answer 12

That misleading information and the way questions are asked can alter the answers given by eye witnesses

Question 13

How many participants were used in the second piece of research?

Answer 13

50 American students

Question 14

How many groups were they divided into?

Answer 14

3

• the first were asked the speed of the cars when they “smashed”
• the second were asked the speed of the cars when they hit
• the control group weren’t asked about speed

Question 15

What was the aim of the research?

Answer 15

To see if misleading information could change the participants memories

Question 16

What did they do in the second piece of research?

Answer 16

Got the participants to watch the clips of the cars crashing, split them into the three groups and asked them to make a written account and asked a series of questions. Then a week later the participants were asked if there was any broken glass.

Question 17

What were the results for the second piece of research?

Answer 17

16 participants (32%) in the smashed group said yes to seeing broken glass, 7 people (13%) in the hit group said yes and 6 people in the control group said yes.