2.4 Eye Witness Testimony

Define leading questions

A question phrased to prompt a certain answer, or influence a persons response

Who investigated the idea of leading questions

Loftus and Palmer

Give the procedure of Loftus and Palmer’s experiment (4 steps)

• PP’s watch a video of a car crash

• PP’s asked to estimate the speed of the cars

• PP’s given a critical leading question containing 1/5 verbs

• 5 verbs used: hit, bumped, contacted, collided, smashed

5 verbs used in Loftus and Palmer experiment

• Hit

• Bumped

• Collided

• Contacted

• Smashed

Give the findings of Loftus and Palmers’s experiment

• Smashed has the highest speed

• Contacted had the lowest speed

What was Foster et al’s findings, and what does it suggest

EWT was more accurate when PP’s thought their response would influence a real trial

Suggests that Loftus and Palmer’s findings may not fully reflect real life EWT, so it may lack ecological validity

Give 2 ethical issues of Loftus and Palmer’s experiment

• deception- PP’s weren’t aware of the true aims of the experiment

• Could cause harm/trauma, leading to anxiety, so less accuracy in EWT

What aspect of GRAPE applies to Loftus and Palmer’s experiment and why?

Generalisability, won’t represent the wider population since PP’s were students

Describe loftus and palmer's 2nd experiment and their findings(3 points)

• One week later PP's returned to answer a series of questions

• critical question was 'did you see any broken glass?’

• 32% of PP’s with the verb ‘smashed’ reported seeing broken glass