2.7 Misleading Questions - Factors affecting accuracy of EWT

2.7 Misleading Questions - Factors affecting accuracy of EWT

1. Leading Questions

   • Loftus and Palmer (1974)
     • Procedure: Had 45 participants watching clips of car accidents then asking questions about the accident. In the critical question, participants had to answer how fast the car was going. 5 groups of participants and each group was asked the question using a different verb : hit, contacted, bumped, collided, smashed
       • Findings: Mean speed for contacted was 31.8 mph whereas the verb smashed had 40.5 mph mean.
   • Response-bias explanation
     • Suggests that the wording of the question has no real effect on the memories but just influences how they decide to answer. Conducted a second experiment in which participants with the word smashed were more likely to report seeing broken glass when there was none.

2. Post-Event discussion

   • Gabbert et al (2003)
     • Procedure: Studied participants in pairs, watching a video of a crime but from two different perspectives. This means each participant could see elements of the event the other couldnt. They then discussed what they had seen.
       • Findings: 71% of participants mistakenly recalled aspects of the event they did not see in the video but discussed.
   • Memory contamination
     • When discussing information, their memories may become altered or distorted. They combine misinformation from other witnesses.
   • Memory conformity
     • Participants may go along with information in order to win the approval of other people.

3. Evaluation

   • Strengths:
     • Real world application. Important uses in the criminal justice system, as consequences of misleading questions can be very serious
   • Weaknesses:
     • Evidence against substitution. EWT is more accurate for some aspects of an event than others. Presumably the participants' attention was focused on central features. Suggests that the original memories survived and were not distorted.
     • Evidence challenging memory conformity. Skagerberg and Wright (2008) showed their participants two versions of a film, their views rather than being changed blended together.