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Loftus and Palmer
Experiment 1

Aim
The aim of this study was to investigate
how information supplied after an event,
influences a witness's memory for that
event
...

Many of the early
studies of memory (e
...

Bartlett 1932)
demonstrated how
memories are not
accurate records of our
experiences
...

Much research has
documented how
difficult it is for people
to estimate numerical
details such as time,
speed and distance
...

Elizabeth Loftus is a
leading figure in the
field of eyewitness
testimony research
...


Method
The study actually consists of two laboratory
experiments
...
The independent
variable in both of the experiments is the verb
used
...


Procedure
The participants were 45 students of the University of
Washington
...
The clips were short excerpts from safety films
made for driver education
...

Following each clip, the students were asked to write an
account of the accident they had just seen
...

There were five conditions in the experiment (each with nine
participants) and the independent variable was manipulated
by means of the wording of the questions
...
In each condition, a
different word or phrase was used to fill in the blank
...

The entire experiment lasted about an hour and a half and a
different ordering of the films was presented to each group of
participants
...


Explanation of findings
Loftus and Palmer give two interpretations/explanations
of the findings of their 1st experiment
...
Firstly, they argue that the results could be due to a
distortion in the memory of the participant
...

2
...
(This is also an example of a demand
characteristic)

Loftus and Palmer argue
that two kinds of
information go into a
person's memory of a
complex event
...
Over time,
information from these two
sources may be integrated
in such a way that we are
unable to tell from which
source some specific detail
is recalled
...
This
argument is called the
reconstructive hypothesis
...
In particular they wanted to
find out if the participants memories
really had been distorted by the verbal
label
...


Table 2
...

50 of the participants were asked 'How
fast were the cars going when they hit
each other?’
50 of the participants were asked 'How
fast were the cars going when they
smashed into each other?'
50 of the participants were not
interrogated about the speed of the
vehicles
...
The
critical question was 'Did you see any
broken glass?' The critical question was
part of a longer series of questions and
was placed in a random position on
each participants question paper
...


To account for the results of the
second experiment, Loftus and
Palmer developed the following
explanation called the
reconstructive hypothesis:
They argue that two kinds of
information go into a person's
memory of an event
...
g
...
g
...
Over
time, the information from these
two sources may be integrated in
such a way that we are unable to
tell from which source some
specific detail is recalled
...




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