Misleading Information AO3

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  -One limitation of the substitution explanation: EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event than for others. Sutherland and Hayne showed participants a video dip. When participants were later asked misleading questions, their recall was more accurate for details of the event than for peripheral ones.
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  -The participants attention was presumably focused on central features of the event and these memories ware relatively resistant to misleading information. This suggests that the orignal memories for central details stayed and weren't distorted, an outcome that isn't predicted by the substitution explanation.
• -One limitation of the memory conformity explanation: evidence that PED actually alters EWT. Shagerberg & Wright showed their participants film clips. There were two versions; a muggers hair was dark brown in one and light brown in another. Participants discussed the clips in pairs, each having seen the other version. They didn't report what they'd seen or what they heard from the co-witnesses but a blend of the two - medium brown hair. This suggests memory itself is distorted through contamination by misleading PED, rather than the result of memory conformity.
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  +One strength: it has important practical uses in the criminal justice system. The consequences of inaccurate EWT can be very serious. Loftos believes leading questions can have such a drastic 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.
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  +This shows that psychologists can help improve the way the legal system works, especially by protecting innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT.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 improve the way the legal system works, especially by protecting innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable EWT.
• +-The practical applications of EWT may be affected by issues with research. Loftus & Palmers participants watched film clips in a lab which is less stressful than if the event happened in the real world. Foster pointed out that what eyewitnesses remember has important consequences in the real world but participant responses in research don’t matter in the same way, participants are less motivated to be accurate. This suggests that researchers such as Loftus are too pessimistic about the effects of misleading information- EWT may be more dependable then studies suggest.