STUDIES + EVAL

• Loftus and Palmer 1974- how fast the cars were going when they 'Critical word' into eachother, the missing verb was changed ranging from 'contacted' to 'smashed', was found the most extreme verb in the sentence correlated to the fasted estimation of miles per hour. Contacted= 31.8, smashed= 40.8, this suggests misleading information can have an impact on EWT
• Loftus and Palmer evaluation 1974- video of car accident- therefore not reflective of real life situations of EWT, however further research support from a follow-up study, replicability,
• Yuille and cutshall- anxiety and EWT- weapon focus as a factor, interviewed 13 witnesses to a deadly shooting 4 months after, was found pps closest to the shooter who had the most anxiety resisted leading questions and produced the most accurate EWT, this suggests misleading information and anxiety may not be a significant problem for real world EWT.
• real life implications of research on anxiety and EWT- the cognitive interview
• Research as a whole on EWT- lab based studies- can suffer from demand characteristics with pps often wanting to help the researcher by giving responses they expect. eg with leading questions the pps may pick up on the language used and give an answer they think will help the researcher,
• Experimental designs such as Loftus's using films of staged crashes and crimes are conducted in a laboratory setting rather than a courtroom. This means that pps are unaware there is a lack of consequences for providing inaccurate EWT. it could be that in the real world under oath people provide more accurate EWT when what they say could lead to a conviction.