Outline and evaluate research into the effect of misleading information on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. Loftus and Palmer conducted a laboratory experiment. Forty-five American students were shown slides of a car accidents and then asked questions that would be asked as if they were being eyewitnesses. They were asked one specific question in five different ways to different groups of the participants, which was ‘about how fast was the car going when they; smashed, hit, bumped, collided and contacted. They found that the estimated speed was effected by the verb used in the question; smashed had the highest speed while contacted had the lowest speed.
The human memory has a propensity to recall erroneous events and even details that did not happen. This phenomenon can be described as reconstruction theory, which “suggests that information stored in the long term memory is not forgotten in the usual sense but sometimes is recalled in a distorted, incorrect manner” (Lahey, Benjamin 2012). An experiment performed by Elizabeth Loftus, showed that a third party can introduce false memory altered by false cues. Subjects viewed a slide of an accident involving cars. Some were later asked to describe the speed of the cars before they smashed into each other, others were asked the same question, but using the term hit instead of smash.
They did this using 45 students. The students were shown seven clips of different traffic accidents and after each clip, they were given a questionnaire that asked them to describe the accident and then it asked them a series of question. One of these question was a critical question which asked them, "How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?". To determine the effect of misleading questions, one group was asked the above question and the other groups were asked the same question but with slightly different wording. Instead of using the word hit, Loftus and palmer replaced it with bumped, smashed, contacted and collided.
In this fact pattern, Officer Smith acted on facts that a car matching the description of the automobile current pulled over of possibly being involved in a previous case involving a fellow officer murdered on the road side. Therefore, Officer Smith’s action of pat-down to ensure her immediate safety was within the scope of the law based on the knowledge that she had available to her at the time of the stop (U.S Supreme Court, 1968). 3. Did exigent circumstances exist for Officer Smith to give chase to this vehicle? Yes, there was an exigent circumstance for Officer Smith to pursue a chase of the vehicle that had just fled from the traffic stop.
The section of the warhead comprises of a low quality composite of steel regular to this type of ammo. It shows up from electroscopic augmentations that a section demonstrates a cast on Cyrillic serial number from the Russian dialect alongside a mostly broken number 2. Mr Akkermans discovered this piece in November of a year ago in a piece of the body of MH-17 close to the town of Grabova in Eastern Ukraine. He was in the battle area four months after the hit with discover reality about the death of the 298 travellers and team of flight MH-17. Other metal particles can be ascribed to the MH-17 Boeing.
Keeley Gillespie Section B Essay Loftus and Palmer (1974) – Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction In the study by Loftus and Palmer, the participants were tested to see whether information supplied after an event changed the way that they recalled the details of it, or whether they recalled details to fit a schema of a previous event. The results of the study were then put into context of a car crash witness, to test if having witness testimonies to prosecute somebody for the crash that occurred are reliable sources of information, or whether the accuracy of what the human mind can recall should be used as a primary source of evidence. The whole study carried out by Loftus and Palmer included 2 different experiments to test whether it was just short term memory that leading questions affected, or whether long term memory was also affected by this factor too. Experiment 1 was the most useful in gathering the important information about how people’s minds worked, and helped Loftus and Palmer reach a conclusion about this information. In experiment 1, Loftus and Palmer gathered 45 participants from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
When a flashbulb memory is made, neural mechanism triggers an emotional arousal because the event is important or shocking. The flashbulb memory theory is supported by the study Brown and Kulik. The study was done to investigate whether dramatic or personally significant events cause "flashbulb" memories. In the study, a retrospective questionnaire was used, and researchers assessed the memories of 80 US participants (40 black and 40 white). 9 out of 10 of the events were about assassinations of celebrities and 1 was a personal event.
The PP’s were shown 7 short film clips from safety films for driver education of traffic collisions. They were then asked to write an account of what they had just seen and asked to answer some specific question and the critical question which was about the speed of the vehicles in the collision. The critical question was: 'About how fast were the cars going when they ***** each other?' The 5 conditions in experiment 1 were: Condition 1: Smashed Condition 2: Collided Condition 3: Bumped Condition 4: Hit Condition 5: Contacted The dependant variable were the speed estimates given by the PP's. In experiment 2 the PP's viewed a short film clip of a multiple car accident and were questioned about it.
This shows that a portion of those who are regarded as having a high academic ability they also have a high belief in the paranormal. Also the Wiseman and Watt (2006) study concluded that believers and non-believers only differ in terms of syllogistic reasoning rather than cognitive ability generally. Therefore both studies imply that an individuals cognitive ability doesn't affect their belief in the paranormal which suggests that there must be another factor that explains peoples belief in coincidences. Another explanation is the evolutionary explanation which refers to our causal thinking leading to type 1 and type 2 errors. Type 1 errors refers to when people accept that there is a link between two events and completely ignore the idea of there
To engage ourselves in a construcive work, we have started a campaign to spread awareness about accidents related to cell phones and driving. In the reference material attached to this letter, you can see various newspapers cuttings and photographs that highlight the gravity of the situation. In the year 2008 alone, nearly 6,000 American residents lost their lives because of accidents related to a cell phone use while driving. Moreover, car crashes and texting via cell phones while driving have been related more closely in recent years. Cell phones usage while driving has been rated to be far more dangerous than drunk driving, which highlights the dangers of using cell phones when we are commuting from one destination to the other.