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MISLEADING INFORMATION ON THE ACCURACY OF EWT - Coggle Diagram
MISLEADING INFORMATION ON THE ACCURACY OF EWT
Eyewitness testimony
the evidence provided by a person who witnessed an event
stages in EWT
storage/retention of information. memories may be lost of become distorted during retention
retrieval of information. accuracy may be affected by the questions asked.
coding of information into LTM
misleading information
post event discussion
where misleading information is added to a memory after the event has occurred
this can occur when eyewitnesses discuss what they saw and compare their perceptions of the event
leading questions
often activate a particular schema, which in turn may influence individuals to give a desired response
e.g. did you see the knife, rather than did you see a knife
questions that suggest a certain answer
loftus and palmer 1974
experiment 1: laboratory experiment, independent group design, 45 uni students watched 7 video clips of road traffic accidents, then asked questions about the video
critical question: about how fast were the cars going when they hit/ smashed/ bumped/ collided/ contacted
investigation into the effects of leading questions
therefore there were 5 conditions
the verb was manipulated by the researcher IV
The DV was the speed estimated given by each ppt
key findings - mean speed estimate mph
bumped = 38.1
collided = 39.3
hit = 34.0
smashed = 40.8
contacted = 31.8
experiment 2
three conditions:
50 of the ppts were asked to estimated the speed of the cars when they 'hit'
loftus and palmer asked 150 ppts to watch a video of a car crash
50 of the ppts were asked to estimated the speed of the cars when they 'smashed'
the control group were asked no questions
they returned one week later, where they continued to question them about accident and asked them the critical question - did you see any broken glass
findings
yes
hit = 7
smashed = 16
control = 6
no
hit = 43
control = 44
smashed = 36
conclusions
experiment 2 showed that misleading information in the form of post event information can also affect memory recall of eyewitness
both studies suggest that a recall, misleading information is reconstructed with material from the orginal memory
experiment 1 showed that misleading information in the form of leading questions can affect recall of eyewitness
evaluation
because it is a laboratory experiment centred on an artificial task and as such lacks relevance to real life scenarios
witnessing real car crashes would have much more of an emotional impact, therefore affecting memory differently
study lacks ecological validity
makes it difficult to generalise the findings beyond experimental setting
evaluation
increases internal validity
makes it possible for other researchers to replicate her experiment
risk of extraneous variables was therefore reduced
conducted under highly controlled lab conditions