Misleading information

• what are leading questions?

  A question which because of the way it has been phrased suggests a certain answer.
• what are the two types of misleading information?

  Leading questions and post event discussion
• what are leading questions a particular issue for?

  eyewitness testimony
• why are leading questions an issue for eyewitness testimony?

  because police questions may direct a witness to give a particular answer
• what was Loftus and Palmer's study?

  - arranged 45 ppts to watch film clips of car accidents and then asked then questions about the accident

  
  

  - in the critical question ppts were asked to describe how fast the cars were travelling

  
  

  - there were 5 groups of ppts and each group was given a different verb in the critical question

  
  

  - one group had the verb hit, the others had contacted, bumped, collided, smashed
• how many ppts were there in Loftus and Palmer's study?

  45 ppts
• what were ppts in Loftus and Palmer's study asked questions about?

  the accident
• in the critical question what were ppts asked?

  to describe how fast the cars were travelling
• how many groups were in Loftus and Palmer's study?

  5
• what was each group given that was different?

  - a different verb in the critical question

  
  

  - one group had the verb hit, the others had contacted, bumped, collided, smashed
• what were the findings of Loftus and Palmer's study?

  - the mean estimated speed was calculated for each ppt group

  
  

  - the verb contacted resulted in a mean estimated speed of 31.8mph

  
  

  - for the verb smashed, the mean was 40.5mph
• what was the mean estimated speed for verb contacted?

  31.8mph
• what was the mean estimated speed for the verb smashed?

  40.5mph
• what does the response bias explanation suggest?

  that the wording of the question has no real effect on ppts' memories, but just influences how they decide to answer
• according to the response bias explanation, what does getting a leading question using the word smashed encourage?

  encourages them to choose a high speed estimate
• what did Loftus and Palmer's second experiment support?

  the substitution explanation
• what does the substitution explanation suggest?

  that the wording of a leading question changes the ppt's memory of the film clip
• when was the substitution explanation shown in Loftus and Palmer's study?

  ppts who originally heard smashed were later more likely to report seeing broken glass (there was none) than those who heard hit
• what did the critical verb alter?


  their memory of the incident
• what may eyewitnesses to a crime do?


  discuss their experiences and memories with each other
• what does Gabbert's experiment explore?

  post event discussion
• procedure of Gabbert's study

  - studied ppts in pairs

  
  

  - each ppt watched a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view

  
  

  - this meant that each ppt could see elements in the event that the other could not - for example, only one of the ppts could see the title of a book being carried by a young woman

  
  

  - both ppts then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall
• how did Gabbert study ppts?


  in pairs
• what did each ppt watch in Gabbert's study?

  a video of the same crime, but filmed from different points of view
• what did watching the same crime but at different points of view mean?

  - that each ppt could see elements in the event that the other could not - for example, only one of the ppts could see the title of a book being carried by a young woman
• what happened with the ppts after Gabbert's study?

  - both ppts then discussed what they had seen before individually completing a test of recall
• what were the findings of Gabbert's study?

  - the researchers found that 71% of the ppts mistakenly recalled aspects of the event that they did not see in the video but had picked up in the discussion

  
  

  - the corresponding figure in a control group, where there was no discussion, as 0%

  
  

  - this was evidence of memory conformity
• how many ppts in Gabbert's study mistakenly recalled aspects of the event they did not see in the video but had picked up in the discussion?

  71%
• what does the findings of Gabbert's study suggest?

  evidence of memory conformity
• what are the two explanations of why post event discussion affects eyewitness testimony?

  1. memory contamination

  2. memory conformity
• what is memory contamination?

  when co-witnesses to a crime discuss it with each other, their eyewitness testimonies may become altered or distorted
• why may memory contamination occur?

  because they combine information from other witnesses with their own memories
• what is memory conformity?

  witnesses go along with each other, either to win social approval or because they believe the other witnesses are right and they are wrong
• what happens to the memory in memory conformity?

  unlike memory contamination, the actual memory is unchanged
• Strength - research into misleading information has important practical uses in the criminal justice system

  - the consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious

  
  

  - Loftus believes that leading questions can have such a distorting effect on memory that police officers need to be very careful about how they phrase their questions when interviewing eyewitnesses

  
  

  - psychologists are sometimes asked to act as expert witnesses in court trials and explain the limits of EWT to juries

  
  

  this shows that psychologists can help to improve the way the legal system works, especially by protecting innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT
• Limitation of substitution explanation - EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event than for others

  - Sutherland and Hayne showed ppts a video clip

  
  

  - when ppts were later asked misleading questions, their recall was more accurate for central details of the event than for peripheral ones

  
  

  - presumably the ppts' attention was focused on central features of the event and these memories were relatively resistant to misleading information

  
  

  this suggests that the original memories for central details survived and were not distorted, an outcome that is not predicted by the substitution explanation
• Limitation of memory conformity explanation - there is evidence suggesting post event discussion actually alters EWT

  - Skagerberg and Wright showed their ppts film clips

  
  

  - there were two versions e.g. mugger's hair was dark brown in one but light brown in the other

  
  

  - ppts discussed the clips in pairs, each having seen different versions

  
  

  - they often did not report what they had seen in the clips or what they had heard from the co-witness but a 'blend' of the two

  
  

  this suggests that the memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading post event discussion, rather than the result of memory conformity