AS OCR Cognitive psychology Loftus and Palmer

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  • Created by: Sara
  • Created on: 18-12-12 21:24

Loftus and Palmer:

General aim:

The general aim is to test whether phrasing of questions about a car accident can alter a participants memory of the event.

Experiment 1

Aim:

The aim of experiment 1 is to see whatever using different verbs to describe a car crach can give different estimates of the cars when the crash take place.


Method:

Participants

  • 45 students
  • No age or gender were recorded

Design and procedure

  • Labratory experiment
  • Independent measures
  • Participants watched 7 clips of car crashes
  • After the participants were asked to write an account of the accident
  • Then they answered a series of questions
  • Only 1 question was impertant, rest was fillers
  • That helps to make it harder to work out the aim of the experiment
  • The critical question was: 'About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?'

Independent Varible (IV): The verbs in the critical question. The verbs (Levels of IV): 'Hit', 'contacted', 'bumped', 'collided' and 'smashed'.

Dependent Varible (DV): The mean estimate speed of the car.

Results:

  • Quantitative data
  • Estimate of the cars speeds did vary according to the verb used in the crictical question
  • 'contacted' got the lowest estimate and 'smashed' got the highest.

(http://www.holah.co.uk/images/loftusbar1.png)


Conclusions:

Participants estimates of the cars varied due to the different verbs used in the critical question. There was two possible reason for this:

  • Response bias: When the participant don't know what to estimate, the verb give them a clue on how much they should estimate.
  • Memory distortion  Or the verb that was used in their qustion altered the participants memory of the event.


Experiment 2

Aim:

The aim of the second experiment was…

Comments

MrsMacLean

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A great summary of Loftus and Palmer's classic experiment which would be very helpful for students studying all AS exam boards.