Theories Actually Seen As A Witness

This was a study about how the questions leading an investigation can change the way a witness explains what they saw, the witness’ memory of the events can be changed or supplemented. For the study they did two experiments, the first experiment they gathered 45 American students, the experiment was conducted in a laboratory which had five conditions, each participant only experienced one of the conditions. The first experiment consisted of 7 films of tragic accidents which were presented to each group in no specific order, the films ranged from 5 to 30 seconds. After each of the films the participants were asked to describe the accident as if they were witness’. The participants were then asked specific questions this included the question ‘About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed/ collided/ bumped/ hit/ contacted) each other?’ Loftus and Palmer had found out that the estimated speed was affected by the verb used for example the participants who were asked what speed the cars were going when they smashed thought that the car was going faster than participants who were asked the speed of the car when the cars hit. The question that was used had already systematically affected the participant’s recollection of the accident. In conclusion the results of the experiment had shown that the verb had altered the
participant’s recollection of the accident. This shows that eyewitness testimonies can be altered/biased by the way questions are asked after a crime has been committed. Loftus and Palmer had come up with two explanations for this result:

Response-bias factor – the misleading information that was given may have influenced the way someone would answer the question; however, it didn’t lead to a false memory of the event.
The memory representation is altered – the critical verb can change the participant’s perception of the accident; some critical words can lead to the accident being more serious than if other verbs were used. This perception will then be stored into the recollection of the event for the participant.

If the second theory is correct it should also alter some of the memories from the accident, Loftus and Palmer conducted a second experiment to test
this. In the second experiment 150 students were shown a one-minute film, this showed a car driving through the countryside which was then followed by a four second clip at the end showing a multiple traffic accident. After the students had watched the film they were asked questions about what they had just witnessed. The independent variable was the type of question the students were asked. It was manipulated by asking 50 students ‘how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’, another 50 students were asked ‘how fast were the cars going when they smashed each other?’, and the last 50 students were not asked a question at all this is because they wanted a control group for the experiment. One week later the dependent variable was measured, the students without watching the film again had to answer ten questions about what they witnessed, one of the questions was crucial and randomly placed within the other 9 nine questions, the question was ‘did you see any broken glass (yes or no)?’ there was no broken glass on the film. The findings suggest that the people who were asked how fast the car was going were more likely to say yes to seeing broken glass compared to the control group who wasn’t asked. Lotus and Palmer had concluded that memory is easily distorted by questioning techniques and information acquired after the event can cause some inaccurate recall or reconstructive memory. The results from the second experiment concluded that this effect is not due to a response-bias this is because the leading questions had actually altered the memory of the events. The addition of false memories to an event is known as confabulation, this has important implications for the questions used in police interviews of witness’.