Experiment 1

• Leading questions are those that

  -suggest a certain answer in the way that they are worded
• Leading questions may result in

  -may result in response bias 

  -The eye witness does not answer the question accurately: they answer in the way that they think they should answer
• What was Loftus and Palmer (1974) aim with the two experiments

  The aim of this study was to investigate how information supplied after an event(post-event information) influences a witness's memory for that event.
• In experiment 1 who were the ppts

  -45 students
• What were the ppts shown

  -seven film clips of traffic accidents ranging from 5-30 secs long

  -after students had to write an account of what they had just seen
• What was the critical question

  speed of the vehicles involved in the collision.
• There were 5 conditions where the Iv was manipulated by

  -the wording of the questions
• What were the conditions

  -'About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?'

  -collided

  -bumped

  -hit

  -contacted
• The results for the mean speed estimates were

  -smashed:40.8

  -contacted:31.8
• It was concluded that the verb used

  -affected the mean estimate of speed
• What was the first explanation Loftus and Palmer gave for the findings of the first experiment

  -The memory of how fast the cars were travelling could have been distorted by the verbal label which had been used to characterise the intensity of the crash.

  -The critical verb provides misleading information
• The second explanation was

  -that the results could be due to response-bias factors, in which case the participant is not sure of the exact speed and therefore adjusts his or her estimate to fit in with the expectations of the questioner. (This is also an example of a demand characteristic)