mis-leading info

• EWT frequently plays a role in criminal investigations and is important to be as accurate as possible to find the right person. One big reason for wrong EWT is leading questions. Loftus and Palmer did an investigation into this. 45 students watched 7 films of traffic incidents. After each film, the pt were given a questionnaire with a series of questions related to the traffic incident. There was one critical question involved which was ‘how fast were the cars going when they … each other’ The gap was filled in with: contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed. This was the leading question.
• Smashed gave an average speed of 40.8mph and contacted gave 31.8. A follow up study was on how the pt response may cause info to be altered before its stored. A new set of pt was shown a film and again asked the questions about speed. A week later they answered one more critical question ‘did you see any broken glass’ yes and smashed= 16, yes and hit=7 control group 6 people said yes. This shows that it does change the memory.
• Post event discussion has also been proved to change memory from 2 pt watching same event, different details and talking about it after. Pt then recalled 71% mistaken items. Repeated interviews also take things from the interviewer into the recollection of events.
• A strength of this study is the real-world application.

  This study has highlighted the problems that are related to EWT and that factors such as leading questions can influence the memory of the eyewitnesses and can therefore bring in lots of incorrect information. This has allowed the research to warn the justice system of problems with ewt evidence.

  This demonstrates the importance in the role of EWT research in helping ensure that innocent people aren’t convicted of crimes they haven’t committed.
• Loftus’ experiment has been criticised for a lack of ecological validity.

  Lab experiments are usually quite artificial and don’t mirror real life situations. This may be due to people not taking the experiment seriously or not emotionally aroused in the way they would be in a real accident. Yuille and Cutshall found that witnesses in an armed robbery event, gave very accurate reports of the incident, despite being given 2 misleading questions.

  This suggests that misleading information may have less of an influence than what was suggested by Loftus.

   
• Another criticism of research into investigating EWT is the individual differences in witnesses.

  An eyewitness usually acquires info from two places which is the event itself and subsequent suggestions (misleading info). A number of studies have found that, compared to younger subjects, elderly people have difficulty remembering the source of their information. As a result, they become much more susceptible to leading questions.

  This suggests that individual differences do play a role in EWT, age in particular.
• One last criticism is that there is a possibility of response bias. Loftus and Palmer found that leading questions resulted in a change of memories leading to events. However, in a replica study, they found that if the questions were in the same order as the original data (loftus and palmer didn’t) pt are not as susceptible to leading questions. This suggests that the order of questions do have a significant effect and then memory change can be due to response bias not storage. This provides an alternative explanation highlights the importance of question order in interviews