EWT- misleading info

• Leading questions


  Response-bias: wording of a question has no enduring effect on an eyewitness's memory of an event, but influences the kind of answer given
• Substitutions explanation


  Wording of a question does affect eyewitness testimony, it interferes with its original memory distorting its accuracy
• Loftus and Palmer (1974) study

  • 45 participants (students) watched film clips and then answered questions about speed
  • Critical question: About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?
  • The verb 'contacted' produced a mean estimated speed of 31.8 mph
  • The verb 'smashed' produced a mean of 40.5 mph
• Gabbert et al. (2003) study


  • Paired participants watched a video of the same crime, but filmed so each participant could see elements the other could not
  • Both participants discussed what they had seen before individually completing a recall test
  • 71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects they did not see but had picked up in the post-event discussion
• Strength of research into mistealing information

  • It has real life applications
• Research has led to important practical uses for police officers and investigators
• Loftus (1975): 'Leading questions can have such a distorting influence on memory that police officers need to be careful about how they phrase questions when interviewing eyewitnesses'
• Research into EWT is one area where psychologists can make an important difference to the lives of real people
• Inaccurate EWT


  Can have very serious consequences
• Yuille and Cutshall (1986)


  • Witnesses of a traumatic real armed robbery had very accurate recall after four months
• Research studies often use younger people as the target to identify
• Older people were less accurate than younger people when giving eyewitness reports
• All age groups were more accurate when identifying people of their own age group (own-age bias)
• Real eyewitnesses search their memory with more effort because their testimony may lead to a successful (or wrongful) conviction