Loftus and Palmer

AIMS: 

• to whether leading questions could distort a persons memory

METHOD:

• 2 EXPERIMENTS
• Both lab experiments
• 1: IV=verb used, DV= memory recall (speed estimates)
• 2: IV= verb used DV= Broken glass?

PARTICIPANTS:

• 1: 45 Students from Washington Uni, 9 per group, representative/individual differences?
• 2: 150 Students (50 per group)

DESIGN:

• 1: Independent groups (5 groups)
• 2: Independent groups (3 groups)

PROCEDURE:

• 1: shown 7 film clips (road safety/traffic accidents), 5 seconds - 30 seconds long, watched in different order (counter-balancing) filled in questionnaire after watching clip - direct questions e.g. colour and critical question 'how fast were the cars going when they...' (smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted)
• 2: same as 1st experiment but 'hit', 'smashed' and control group used, saw 1 clip with multiple car pile up - speed varied amongst group - reliable as re-test of 1st experiment, a week later filled in another questionnaire 'was there any broken glass' (NONE WAS EVIDENT ON THE FILM)

RESULTS:

• 1: contacted=31.8mph average, smashed=40.8mph average whereas the…