WA #2
In Loftus’s article “Leading Questions and the Eyewitness Report”, she investigates how being asked a sequence of questions after witnessing a major event may affect the memory that develops after it. With her hypothesis, she suggests how wording to a question can affect a person’s answer to it. An example to back it up was reported by Harris in 1973. His volunteers were told the experiment was a study of accuracy of guessing correct measurements. After, they were asked questions like “How tall is the basketball player?” or “How short is the basketball player?” The questions do not insinuate anything over the height. Instead it insinuates that the basketball player is short. The guesses were 79 and 69 in. There were also similar results …show more content…
It demonstrated a noisy class discussion, resulting in demonstrator to leave the room. Half of them were asked the following question “Was the leader of the 12 demonstrators who entered the classroom male?” and the other remaining half were asked “Was the leader of the 4 demonstrators who entered the classroom male?”. The subjects responded by simply answering yes and no. Then a week later, the volunteers came back, and were asked 20 new questions about the video. They did not watch the video again. They had to use the memory of the last week. The analytical question here was “How many demonstrators did you see entering the classroom?”. Volunteers who had been asked the “12” question said they saw an average of 8.85 people 1 week earlier. People who were asked the “4” reported an average 6.40. The real number was 8. This analysis shows that recall of the specific number given in the first questionnaire is not a sufficient alternative explanation of the present results. The implication is that a question involving a false numerical assumption can affect a witness’s answer to a following question about a quantitative …show more content…
The main question was about the speed of the white car. 1/2 of the volunteers were asked “How fast was the white sports car going when it passed the barn while traveling along the country road?”. The other remaining half was asked “How fast was the white sports car going while traveling down the country road?”. The truth of it was there was no barn in the scene. They returned a week later, without reviewing the automobile accident video, they answered 10 new questions. The last question was “Did you see a barn?” Only giving them the options of yes and no. 17.3% of the volunteers that were asked the false assumption answered “yes” when they were asked if they had seen a barn. Only 2.7% had claimed they had seen them in the previous questionnaire. This analyzes that a false presumption can affect a volunteer’s later response to report the presence of a nonexistent object. The last experiment will try to find out if this was only because the word “barn” was thrown in there. The independent variable was the word “barn” when asking the
In Loftus’s article “Leading Questions and the Eyewitness Report”, she investigates how being asked a sequence of questions after witnessing a major event may affect the memory that develops after it. With her hypothesis, she suggests how wording to a question can affect a person’s answer to it. An example to back it up was reported by Harris in 1973. His volunteers were told the experiment was a study of accuracy of guessing correct measurements. After, they were asked questions like “How tall is the basketball player?” or “How short is the basketball player?” The questions do not insinuate anything over the height. Instead it insinuates that the basketball player is short. The guesses were 79 and 69 in. There were also similar results …show more content…
It demonstrated a noisy class discussion, resulting in demonstrator to leave the room. Half of them were asked the following question “Was the leader of the 12 demonstrators who entered the classroom male?” and the other remaining half were asked “Was the leader of the 4 demonstrators who entered the classroom male?”. The subjects responded by simply answering yes and no. Then a week later, the volunteers came back, and were asked 20 new questions about the video. They did not watch the video again. They had to use the memory of the last week. The analytical question here was “How many demonstrators did you see entering the classroom?”. Volunteers who had been asked the “12” question said they saw an average of 8.85 people 1 week earlier. People who were asked the “4” reported an average 6.40. The real number was 8. This analysis shows that recall of the specific number given in the first questionnaire is not a sufficient alternative explanation of the present results. The implication is that a question involving a false numerical assumption can affect a witness’s answer to a following question about a quantitative …show more content…
The main question was about the speed of the white car. 1/2 of the volunteers were asked “How fast was the white sports car going when it passed the barn while traveling along the country road?”. The other remaining half was asked “How fast was the white sports car going while traveling down the country road?”. The truth of it was there was no barn in the scene. They returned a week later, without reviewing the automobile accident video, they answered 10 new questions. The last question was “Did you see a barn?” Only giving them the options of yes and no. 17.3% of the volunteers that were asked the false assumption answered “yes” when they were asked if they had seen a barn. Only 2.7% had claimed they had seen them in the previous questionnaire. This analyzes that a false presumption can affect a volunteer’s later response to report the presence of a nonexistent object. The last experiment will try to find out if this was only because the word “barn” was thrown in there. The independent variable was the word “barn” when asking the