misleading information

• describe the study by Loftus and Palmer

  • 45 students shown seven films of traffic accidents
  • given questionnaire about films
  • critical question- how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?
  • one group got this question, in place of the verb hit, other groups got given different verbs- smashed, collided, etc
  • study showed that the different verbs influenced the estimated speeds the pps came up with- the harsher the verb, the faster the pps were likely to say the cars were going

  SECOND EXPERIMENT-

  • New set of pps shown car accident, were asked questions about speed, and then one week later given another questionnaire about the incident
  • critical question: did you see any broken glass? there was no broken glass, but pps reported seeing it
• what conclusion can be drawn from Loftus and Palmer's study?

  leading questions change the memory of a participant for an event
• what two ways can a memory of an event be altered?

  • through leading questions
  • through post-event discussion
• what is the term for when co-witnesses reach a consensus view of what happened during a particular event?

  conformity effect
• who investigated conformity effect?

  Fiona Gabbert
• describe how Gabbert investigated the conformity effect

  • pps were in pairs, pps watched different videos of the same event
  • pairs in one condition were encouraged to discuss the event before individually recollecting what had happened
  • 71% of the witnesses who had discussed the event went on to mistakenly recall items acquired during discussion
• state two ways in which post-event discussion can distort memory for events

  • conformity effect
  • repeat interviewing
• describe how repeat interviewing leads to inaccuracies in EWTs

  • each time that an eyewitness is interviewed there is a possibility that comments from an interviewer can distort the memories of a witness and disrupt recollection of events
  • interviewers may also use leading questions which disrupt memory
• describe the process of eyewitness memory

  1. witness encodes into LTM details of the event. Encoding may be partial/distorted.
  2. info is retained for a period of time. Memories can be lost/modified during retention, other activities may interfere with the memory itself
  3. witness retrieves memory for storage. Presence/absence of cues affects the accuracy of what's recalled
• evaluation of misleading information?

  • 😊research support- Braun et al- college students asked to evaluate misleading advertising info about disney, containing bugs bunny (not disney character) or Ariel (not present when they were kids). Many mistakenly recalled shaking hands with these characters at disneyland, more than control grp.
  • ☹️EWT in real life- lab experiment- people not taking it seriously, not emotionally aroused the same as in a real accident, in reality these things have little effect on EWT
  • 😊real life applications- warn justice system- mistaken eye witnesses highest factor in conviction of innocent people
  • ☹️individual differences- Schacter- elderly people have more difficulty in remembering source of info, so more susceptible to inaccuracies in EWT