eyewitness testimony: leading questions

• Procedure for Loftus and Palmer study on leading questions: 45 particpants watched film clips of car accidents and then ansewre questions about speed. The critical question was ‘how fast were the cars going when they hit eachother?‘ There were 5 groups of participants and they each got a different verb in the critical question: hit, contacted, bumped, collided or smashed
• Findings of Loftus and palmer study on leading questions: The verb ‘contacted’ produced a mean estimate speed of 31.8 mph. For verb ‘smashed‘ the mean was 40.5 mph. The leading question biased eyewitness recall of an event. The verb ‘smashed’ suggested a faster speed of the car than ‘contacted’
• Leading questions affect eyewitness testimony because the wording of a question has no enduring effect on eyewitness’s memory of an event but, influence the kind of answer given. This is because the wording of a question can affect memory as it interferes with the original memory distorting its accuracy
• One strength of leading questions is real world application in the criminal justice system. Consequences of inaccurate eyewitness testimony are serious. Loftus argue police officers should be careful in how they phrase questions so their memory doesn’t get distorted. Psychologists are expert witnesses in trial and explain the limits of eyewitness testimony to juries. Therefore, psychologists can improve legal system and helps innocent people from faulty convictions based on unreliable eyewitness testimony
• One limitation of misleading questions is evidence challenging it. Sutherland and Hayne found participants recalled central details of an event better than peripheral ones even when asked misleading questions. This is because their attention was focused on central features and these memories were resistant to misleading information. Therefore, original memory of event wasn’t distorted which isn’t predicted by the misleading questions