Factors Affecting EWT : Misleading Information

Question 1

Define ewt

Answer 1

A legal term given to the term of eyewitnesses in court to give evidence for the identity of someone who has committed a crime

Question 2

What are the 2 types of misleading information

Answer 2

A leading question
Post event discussion

Question 3

Define leading question

Answer 3

A type of question that prompts a respondent towards providing and already determined answer

Question 4

What study investigated leading questions and give the procedure

Answer 4

Loftus and palmer
45 students were shown 7 films of car accidents and after watching them were told to complete a questionnaire, a critical question being how fast the car was going and a different verb was given for each group, e.g collided, smashed, bumped, hit, contacted

Question 5

What were the results of loftus and palmers reeaserch into leading questions

Answer 5

Smashed: 40.5
Collided: 39.3
Bumped: 38.1
Hit: 34
Contacted: 31.8
Showing that dramatic verbs le

Question 6

Define post event discussion

Answer 6

Occurs when more than one witness, discussion may influence the accuracy of each witnesses recall of the event. Discussion may contaminate the witnesses memory bcs they combine misinformation from other witnesses with their own memory

Question 7

What research investigated post event discussion and outline the procedure

Answer 7

Fiona gabbert and her colleagues
Pps were studied in pairs and told to watch a video of a crime but at different povs, so one partner could see one element and the other could see other elements
They were then told to discuss what they saw with each other and complete a recall test individually

Question 8

What were the findings of Fiona gabberts study of post event discussion

Answer 8

71% pps mistakenly recalled aspects of the vid they did not see but picked up on the discussion
In the control group w no discussion the figure was 0%
Witnesses often go along with each other bcs of social approval or because they think the other person was right

Question 9

Give all the evaluation points for misleading info for EWT

Answer 9

+ real world application
- artificial tasks
- individual differences
- lab exp

Question 10

Evaluate misleading info: + real world application

Answer 10

Research on misleading info has important real life applications due to the serious consequences of inaccurate EWT
Loftus found that leafing questions distort memory so police must phrase questions carefully
Psychologists may also use EWT research to enhance the legal system and may serve as expert witnesses

Question 11

Evaluate misleading info: - artificial tasks

Answer 11

Loftus and palmer used film clips and not real accidents lacking real life stress and emotion
This reduces the validity and makes the findings less applicable to real life situations involving EWT

Question 12

Evaluate misleading info: - individual differences

Answer 12

Age affects accuracy as older people tend to be less accurate in eyewitness reports than younger adults (anastasi and Rhodes)
There’s also own age bias where all age groups are more accurate at identifying people their own age, there’s research bias as studies use younger adults

Question 13

Evaluate misleading info: + and - lab experiments

Answer 13

Many studies involving EWT tests are lab experiments where there is lots of controls to minimise the affects of extraneous variables increasing the reliability and replicability
However lab experiments have low ecological validity and pps may demonstrate demand characteristics as they don’t want to let the researcher down and want to appear helpful and attentive, so when given a question they don’t know the answer to, they guess, which affects the results