Loftus & Palmer
Background: Native American story was told to western children and asked to repeat the story a week later, they replaced foreign words with words they knew in their culture such as canoe to boat. This shows the effects of the schema as they weren't able to process this new information, that their memory of it can be altered. The schema changed the words in order to fit the details to what it can understand from their normal culture.
Experiment 1
Aim: To investigate whether how information supplied after an event influences a memory of an event e.g car crash
Method: Lab experiment; IV- the verb used in the critical question (smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted), DV- estimation of speed of the car; used a volunteer sample of 45 students from University of Washington
:) Keen and enthusiastic (due to volunteering)
:( Lack of driving experience; ethnocentric; not representative of whole population- cannot generalise; report bias
Procedure: The students watched 7 clips of staged and real car crashes from local police training videos and then asked to write a general account of what they saw and fill out a questionnaire. They were divided into 5 groups with each group having a different condition of the IV. The questions were asked in different orders to reduce order effects. They had to guess the speed that the car was travelling.
Findings: Students in the smashed group guessed the cars were travelling at 40.8 mph which is the highest. Students in the contacted group guessed the car was travelling at the lowest speed.
Conclusion: The wording of the critical question does distort a person's memory of events; OR report bias- as the students wanted to please professor gave false answers/it was mandatory so they weren't bothered as they had to be there.

Experiment 2
Aim: To find out whether information supplied after an event can distort the memory of that event
Method: Lab experiment; IV- the verb used in the critical question, DV- whether the student saw glass; volunteer sample of 150 students from University of Washington
:) Large sample size; keen and enthusiastic
:( Lack of driving experience; ethnocentric; not representative of whole population- cannot generalise
Procedure: Students watched a minute clip of a car crash (actual crash lasting 4 seconds and then asked to write a general account of what they saw and fill out a questionnaire. They were divided into 3 groups with each group having a different condition of the IV (smashed, hit, control-they weren't asked questions). The questions were asked in different orders to reduce order effects. They were asked to return a week later and they were asked whether they saw broken glass.
Findings: Smashed had the highest number of people seeing broken glass- 16/50. Both control and hit received similar results (6 and 7/50)
Conclusions: The verb used in a leading question does distort the person's memory of the event.

Evaluation:
Usefulness: In court for eyewitness testimonies can't convict on it Used by police- cognitive interview no leading questions
Strengths: controlled conditions: age of participants, incident viewed, equipment used so only IV affected DV
Weaknesses:

Ecological validity: no emotional arousal, task and environment not true to life more context but they had been cued- wasn't unexpected BUT people may be asked for an estimation of the car speed in real life
Sample

	Created by 09Reynok over 11 years ago

AS Psychology Note on Cognitive Approach, created by 09Reynok on 26/12/2014.