AO1 - Description of Loftus and Palmer

Aim - To investigate weather leading questions would influence the estimates of the speed of a vehicle recalled by eyewhitnesses.

Procedure - Exp1 - 45 pp (students) shown 7 short video clips of traffic accidents lasting 5-30 secs. They were split inot 5 groups with 9 pp in each one.All pp asked 'about how fast were the cars going when they ..... eachother. Each group given different verb - Smashed, collided, bumped, hit or contracted' - Iv spead of estimated travel - DV. Exp 2 - 150 pp shows short film showing 4 secs of multy car accident with nobroken glass. The pp split into 3 groups, one asked how fast were they going when they hit eachother' Second asked 'how fast when they smashed. Third group not asked about speed. 1 week later ask if they saw any broken glass.

Results - Smashed 40.8, contacted 31.8. When verb smashed was used pp estimated the cars we're traveling much faster that contacted. Did you see any broken glass: Smash - Yes: 16, No: 34. Hit - Yes: 7, No: 43, Control - Yes: 6, No: 44

Conclusion - Leading information - verb in the speed question affects way an event was represented in memory. Over time, the misleading information was intergrated with origional memory so that at retreval the memory was reconstructed to include new information.Concluded in false memory.