A01 MI Factors affecting EWT

• Leading questions

  Loftus and Palmer arranged for student ppts to watch film clips of car accidents and then gave them questions about the accident
• Leading question in experiment

  Ppts asked how fast the cars were travelling about 'how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?' This was a leading Q because the verb 'hit' suggests the speed of the car
• Five groups of ppts with diff verbs

  5 verbs used: 'smashed' 'collided' 'bumped' 'hit' and 'contacted
• Mean estimate

  Mean estimated speed calculated for each group. 'Contacted'= 31.8 mph. 'Smashed'= 40.5 mph. Thus, it is evident that the verb biased eyewitness recall of an event
• Why do leading Qs affect Eye witness testimony

  Response bias explanation is where wording of Q has no effect on ppts memory, but influences how they decide to answer
• Substitution explanation

  Loftus and Palmer conducted second experiment where they found the substitution explanation= wording of the leading question changes ppts memory of film clip: Critical verb altered memory of incident
• Post-event discussion

  Co-witnesses discuss what they saw and give false testimonies as their own recollection has been influenced by another witnesses recollection
• Gabbert


  Studied ppts in pairs and each ppt watched a video of the same crime but from different perspectives. Each ppt saw elements that others didn't. Then ppts discussed what they saw as a test of recall
• Findings from Gabbert research

  Researchers found 71% of ppts mistakenly recalled aspects of events they did not see in the video but were told. Gabbert concluded that Witnesses go along with each other because of memory conformity