Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Loftus and Palmer - Coggle Diagram
Loftus and Palmer
Procedure
7 films of traffic accidents, ranging in duration from 5 to 30 seconds, were presented in a random order to each group.
After watching the films, the ppts were asked to recall what happened making a statement as if they were eye witnesses
They were asked specific questions like how fast were the cars going when they smashed / collided / bumped / hit / contacted?
It was found that the ppts who were given the harsher verbs (smashed, collided) predicted the cars to be going faster that those who had the gentler verbs (bumped, contacted).
-
Conclusion
-
The overall conclusion is that the way questions are asked after a crime can alter eye-witness testimonies
Response-Bias Factors - The questions may have led to response-bias answers/demand characteristics but that doesn’t necessarily mean there was a false memory created.
Memory representation is altered - the use of critical verbs may make ppts perceive the crash to have been more extreme than they originally thought.
They believed that is the memory representation being altered was the case then they would remember other chunks of false information. They carried out a second experiment to explore this
-
Aim
-
They did this to show that leading questions and the vocabulary used can alter testimonies and statements from witnesses
-
Results
-
-
Those who were asked the “smashed” question predicted that the vehicles were travelling faster than those who were asked the “bumped” or “hit”
Experiment 2
Aim: investigating if leading questions simply create a response bias, or if they actually alter a person’s memory representation.
-
Procedure: 50 were asked a question about how fast the car was going when it “smashed”, 50 were asked how fast was the car going when it “hit” while 50 were not asked at all (control group).
One week later, they were asked “Yes or no, did you see any broken glass in the video?”
-
-