STUDIES (EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY)

Question 1

Loftus (1979)

Answer 1

To test effect of weapon focus on recall

Condition 1: Pps in room, heard crashing/confrontation, man emerges with knife, comments
Condition 2: chat about broken water filter, man emerges with pen, comments

Condition 1 33% accurate, condition 2 49% accurate

Question 2

Loftus and messot (1987)

Answer 2

To test weapon focus

Pps shown slides of fast food restaurant

Condition 1: man shows gun

Condition 2: man shows cheque

Eye fixations recorded

More focus on weapon, poorer recall in weapon condition

Question 3

Christianson and Hubinette (1993)

Answer 3

110 witnesses to 20 real robberies

More accurate recall in victims than bystanders, even after 15 months

Question 4

Brewer and Treyens (1981)

Answer 4

Effects of Schemas on recall

Pps made to wait in room for 35 secs with 61 objects

Some objects normal for office, some abnormal

Pps more likely to recall office like items

Some office like items falcely recalled (high schema expectancy)

Question 5

Flin et al (1992)

Answer 5

Testing effects of age on recall

Pps age 5-9 y/o witness argument between nurse and assistants

Recall accurate day after

40% less recall after 5 months

Question 6

Loftus and Palmer (1975)

Answer 6

misleading information on recall

150pps shown film of car accident

Condition 1: consistent questions with film, 2.7% said yes barn

Condition 2: ^^ except one question mentioning barn (not there) 17% said yes barn

Question 7

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Answer 7

Pps shown video of car accident

Questions asked pps how fast car was going when cars:

Contacted

Smashed

Difference of 10mph in estimates and smashed group remembered glass where there was none.

Question 8

Geiselmann (1988)

Answer 8

89 college students watch tape of violent crimes

…48 hours later interviewed by detectives with cognitive interview or not.

29.4 correct items w/o vs 41.5 correct items with

Question 9

Bekerian and Dennett (1993)

Answer 9

Meta analysis of 27 cognitive interview studies

Concluded that all interviews had benefited in accuracy from cognitive interview

Question 10

Godden and Baddeley (1975)

Answer 10

Testing effect of environment/context on retrieval

Divers as pps, tested 15 ft underwater or on land memorizing 40 words.

Condition 1: swap environment

Condition 2: stay underwater/on ground

those who stayed remembered 12.5 words (more)

Question 11

Brandsford and Johnson (1972)

Answer 11

• Constructed prose passages that would be difficult to understand in the absence of context
• Compared recall in group supplied with contextual information and a group not supplied with contextual information
• Group given schema showed better recall

Question 12

Loftus et al (1978)

Answer 12

• Effect of misleading questions on accurate recall
• 2 groups
• Group one saw slide with red car stopping at ‘give way’ sign
• Group two saw slide with same car stopping at ‘stop sign’
• each group halved, each half asked either: “did another car pass the one when it was stopped at the ‘give way’ sign?”/…“stopped at the ‘stop’ sign?” half were asked a misleading question
• 20 mins later pps shown 15 pairs of slides, had to pick from each pair the slide from the original set. critical pair had car at ‘stop’ and ‘yield’ signs

Results:

• 75% of pps who had received the consistent questions picked the correct slide. Only 41% chose correctly in mislead group
• Accuracy fell to 20% for mislead if recognition test delayed by 1 week

Eval: slides, not real life. Not everyone was mislead

Question 13

Loftus (1979) - blatantly wrong misleading information

Answer 13

• People see slides showing theft of red purse
• 98% accurate recall when remembering the colour of the purse
• Read account of the incident that said it was brown
• Only two pps said it was brown
• Shows that memorable information is less easily tampered with than peripheral information