Misleading Information on Eyewitness Testimony

Misleading Information on Eyewitness Testimony

1. Research on leading questions

   • Wording of questions can lead to giving certain answers
   • 'Direct' questions
   • Loftus and Palmer had 45 participants to watch film on car accidents
   • They were asked how fast the car was going but the verbs changed with hit, contacted, bumped, collided and smashed (5 groups)
   • Contacted averaged at 31.8mph and smashed averaged at 40.5mph

2. Why do leading questions affect EWT?

   • Response-bias explanation has nothing to do with memory but to do with how they answer
   • Loftus and Palmer did this again and those who heard smashed, thought the windows smashed but those who heard hit, thought there was no glass smashed
   • Critical verb altered their memory of incident

3. Research on post-event discussion

   • This is when two witnesses discuss what happens and the testimonies become contaminated with each other's memories
   • Gabbert and her colleague studied pairs of participants
     • The two people got different camera angles of the incident and then discussed it before doing a recall test
   • Researchers found 71% mistakenly recalled aspects of the events which they did not see and picked up in discussion
     • The control group where they did not discuss was 0%