Eyewitness Testimony: Misleading Information

A01:

Two key features of misleading information: leading questions and post-event discussion.

Leading Questions - Questions asked that duggest/lure you into giving a desired or specific answer.

Substitution Explanation - When the participants' memories have changed

Response-bias explanation - Participants' memories don't change but their responses do. May be due to demand characterstics or social desirability bias.

Study: Loftus and Palmer - Leading Questions

Procedures:

Loftus and Palmer showed 45 participants a car crash vieo and then asked them to guess how fast the car was going, using either one of these words:

-'how fast was the car going when it...[smashed'/ 'collided'/ 'hit'/ 'bumped'/'contacted']...the other car?' '

Findings: average speed guessed by participants, based on the word:

• smashed - 41mph 
• Hit - '34mph'

Conclusion: Leading questions do affect/distort recall.

Gabbert et al (2003) - Post-Event discussion

Procedures: 

Gabbert et al used 60 young participants an 60 old participants. The participants were individually shown a robbery video but in different angles for different participants. Participants had to report what they saw to the researcher.

The participants were split into 2 conditions:

• 1st condition - participants had to discuss with other participants what they saw after being shown the video (and reporting)
• 2nd condition (control) - participants did not discuss what they saw with other participants

The participants had to then report again what they saw in the video, individually.

Findings: 

Participants in the 1st condition - post-discussion interview/report (of what they saw) -> 71% reported details of the crime they did not actually see/report the first time round.

Participants in the 2nd condition - post-discussion interview/report (of what they saw) -> 0% reported details they did not actually see.

Conclusion: 

Shows that post event discussions can affect recall. Also provides as evidence for the substitution explanation.

A03:

Strength - Good replicability; support for Loftus and…