Psychologist’s claim that the human memory is not reliable and it’s because of this that there have been circumstances that have affected the accuracy of the Eye Witness Testimony. Many factors that have been found to affect the EWT some include emotional stress, misleading information and post-event discussion.
One source shows an experiment by Loftus and Palmer (1974) who researched the theory that misleading questions could affect the EWT. They showed participants a video of a car crash and then asked them questions about the crash by changing the words they used to describe the car colliding. They some participants “how fast were the cars going when they ‘smashed’ in to each other?” and asked the same question to the other participants …show more content…
Going back to the question Loftus and Palmer asked, we relate back to our life experiences when we hear words such as ‘smashed’ instead of ‘hit’ and our memory takes us to a dramatic scene of when hearing that more effective word making it a cause of mislead memory. Seeing a video of a car crash can be very emotionally distressing and this emotion can affect the results as the participants can be distracted and won’t see how fast the car was going and if there was glass smashed. The experiment wasn’t experienced in life so it can also be hard to judge how fast the car was going than seeing it in person, when we can hear and feel the noise as we would if we were at the scene. By watching a video, it easy to turn away and ignore the noise and become …show more content…
Schemas are information of what we keep in our memory, they can be from what we have learnt in our past life experiences. “The War of the Ghosts” from Remembering (1932) experiment by Bartlett who assigned participants to read the book “war of the ghosts” and then asked to recall it many times. The study showed that participants found it harder to remember information from the story when reading it after a longer break. Instead of using words that were in the story they would use a word that related to it that they would use, making it relate to themselves. Such as using “happy” instead of “cheerful” because it is easier to process and used more in their day to day life so comes to mind more than cheerful
One source shows an experiment by Loftus and Palmer (1974) who researched the theory that misleading questions could affect the EWT. They showed participants a video of a car crash and then asked them questions about the crash by changing the words they used to describe the car colliding. They some participants “how fast were the cars going when they ‘smashed’ in to each other?” and asked the same question to the other participants …show more content…
Going back to the question Loftus and Palmer asked, we relate back to our life experiences when we hear words such as ‘smashed’ instead of ‘hit’ and our memory takes us to a dramatic scene of when hearing that more effective word making it a cause of mislead memory. Seeing a video of a car crash can be very emotionally distressing and this emotion can affect the results as the participants can be distracted and won’t see how fast the car was going and if there was glass smashed. The experiment wasn’t experienced in life so it can also be hard to judge how fast the car was going than seeing it in person, when we can hear and feel the noise as we would if we were at the scene. By watching a video, it easy to turn away and ignore the noise and become …show more content…
Schemas are information of what we keep in our memory, they can be from what we have learnt in our past life experiences. “The War of the Ghosts” from Remembering (1932) experiment by Bartlett who assigned participants to read the book “war of the ghosts” and then asked to recall it many times. The study showed that participants found it harder to remember information from the story when reading it after a longer break. Instead of using words that were in the story they would use a word that related to it that they would use, making it relate to themselves. Such as using “happy” instead of “cheerful” because it is easier to process and used more in their day to day life so comes to mind more than cheerful