Core Studies: Loftus and Palmer

• What did they study?

  Classic study of the interaction between memory and language.
• What was the background part 1?

  1. Memory is the structure and processes associated with storing and retrieving information
  2. Bartlett found that memory is influenced by what we already know and we use past experiences to deal with new experiences, these are known as schemas
  3. reconstructive memory involves interpreting what is seen or heard, but this can be distorted in two ways
• What is Loftus and Palmer's background part 2?

  4. Reconstructive memory is important when considering eye witness testimony, as our memory of an event can be easily influenced, yet juries are often convinced by eye witness testimonies

  5. this lead L+P to investigate how reliable eye witness testimony is, and how memory can be impacted by leading questions
• What was L+P's aim?

  To investigate the effects of leading questions on an individuals' reconstructive memory, and their ability to recall events.
• Sample?

  45 students from Loftus' psych class in Washington uni split into 5 groups (exp 1), 150 different students from W uni in 3 groups (exp 2)
• What was the research method?

  lab experiments with independent measures
• What was the procedure of experiment 1?


  All ps shown 7 film clips of different traffic accidents, then given a questionnaire after each clip. Were asked to describe accident and then answer questions about it. Each condition/group had different verb in critical question- hit/contacted/bumped/collided/smashed. Critical question was "about how fast were the cars going when they... each other?".
• What were the findings from exp 1?


  Estimated mean speed from verb smashed= 40.5mph vs contacted= 31.8mph.
• Why was the second experiment done?

  As there were two possible explanations for the estimations, and they wanted to test which actually caused it. One was response bias- difficult to estimate speed, so a more serious verb made them estimate higher speed while their actual memory of the event hadn't changed. Other was changes in memory- more serious sounding verbs cause people to really believe they'd witnessed cars travelling faster.
• What was the procedure of the second experiment?


  All ps watched a one minute clip with a 4 second car crash. Then given questionnaire to describe accident and critical q about speed. 50ps 'smashed', 50ps 'hit', 50ps not asked about speed (control group). One week later, ps asked on another questionnaire "Did you see any broken glass?", would answer yes or no.
• What were the results of exp 2?

  Yes response/50 was 16 from smashed, 7 from hit and 6 from control group.
• What were the conclusions from exp 1?


  1. verb used in question will influence a person's memory and response
  2. people aren't very good at judging vehicular speed
• What were the conclusions from experiment 2?


  1. misleading post event info can distort an individual's memory
  2. leading questions added information to memories already created- expect broken glass because of verb 'smashed', so recall seeing broken glass
• What were the overall conclusions?

  1. Memory is constructed from what we actually perceive as happening at the time and the info which is later received and incorporated into our memory. these two sources integrate over time and its hard to decipher what information is from a reliable source or not.
  2. Eye witness accounts of events may not be reliable sources of information, especially when leading questions are used.