EWT- Misleading information

• What is Eyewitness testimony?

  The ability of people to remember the details of events like accidents/crimes.
• What can affect Eyewitness Testimony?

  Leading questions

  Post-event Discussion

  Anxiety
• What are leading Questions?

  A question which because of the way it has been phrased suggests a certain answer.
• What was the procedure for Loftus and Palmer's Study?

  They arranged for 45 American pps to watch film clips of car accidents and then gave them questions about the accidents.

  
  

  Critical Question - 'About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?'

  Each of 5 groups were given different verbs in the critical question:Hit, Contacted, Bumped, Collided, Smashed
• What were the findings for the Loftus and Palmer Study?

  Smashed produced the highest estimate (40.5 mph) and contacted was the lowest (31.8 mph).
• Why do Leading Questions affect EWT?


  A response-bias explanation- wording of the question doesn't effect the memory but influences how they decide to answer.

  
  

  Substitution explanation- (Loftus and Palmer's 2nd question) Wording a leading question changes the participants memory.

  This was demonstrated as by hearing the word 'smashed' they thought they saw broken glass.
• What is Post-event Discussion?

  More than one witness where they may discuss what they have seen. This may influence the accuracy of each witness's recall of the event.
• What study shows Post-event Discussion?

  Gabbert et al
• What was the procedure for Gabbert et al's study of Post-event Discussion?

  PPs in pairs. Each watched a video of the same crime, but from different POVs.Both ppts then discussed what they had seen on the video before individually completing a test of recall.
• What were the results for Gabbert et al's study of Post-event Discussion?

  71% mistakenly recalled aspects of the event. This is what they picked up in post-event discussion.

  
  

  0% error in control group
• AO3 Limitation of loftus and palmer, underepresentative

  • -> Used students which may not represent the wider population due to the young nature of their age
  • Could be suggested that the drastic change in answers was therefore not a result of the leading question, but the lack of driving experience students have which may have impaired their ability to guess a reasonable estimate
  • Age may act as a confounding variable as a result, distorting the findings
  • Therefore limits the explanatory ability and generalizability of findings to the wider population and how leading questions may effect the accuracy of EWT
  • Multiple ages should be assessed in order to see if leading questions have as large of an impact as previously suggested
• AO3 Strength real life app.

  • Strength from the research devised is that it has had impact on practical uses in the real world
  • Reviews the consequence of inaccurate EWT and has resulted in changes to ensure EWT are accurate and use techniques to avoid confabulations as such
  • Significant for police officers and other forms of the legal system/court trials as questions should be employed to not elicit a certain response which could swing a scenario very seriously
  • Therefore a strength as the research has had a positive impact/benefit on real life situations, allowing us to understand and implicate measures to prevent leading questions or even PED from affecting EWT’s, may help appropriate justice to be served
• source monitoring theory

  memories of the event are genuinely distorted. The eyewitness can recall information about the event (accurate and inaccurate), but they can’t recall where it came from. Was it from their own memory of the event or did they hear it from someone else? This is known as source confusion.