Leading Questions On Memory Recall Essay

The aim of this experiment was to investigate the impact of leading questions on memory recall. The results obtained were deemed statistically significant , which indicates that there is a positive correlation between the choice of verbs and the estimation of speed. These findings matches those of the original study conducted by Loftus and Palmer in 1974. They found out that the re-phrasing of words in a question could affect a witness’s answering. The findings also positively supports the study of Bartlett in 1932 on the theory that schematic influence effects and have impact on memory encoding as well as recalling.

The mean value of the data showed that “Crashed” (Provocative) evoked the highest speed estimation at 70.0km/h suggesting it has the most intense effect on the participants as compared to “Bumped” (unprovocative) that had an mean estimation of 41.5km/h. However , the participants in this study are mostly below the age of 16 , Singapore’s legal driving age is 18 and they have no experience in driving and therefore have limited knowledge about driving speed. Thus, the lack of experience might have caused them to provide an inaccurate estimation of speed because participants could not base their knowledge off …show more content…
This is also important for the eye witness testimony in court as eye witness plays a very crucial role. Juries in court tend to pay very close attention to eyewitness testimony and they generally finds it a reliable source of information. However, research into this area has come to the conclusion that eyewitness testimony can be affected by many psychological factors such as Anxiety , Stress or change of verbs in questions such as in this assessment. All these factors causes reconstructive Memory and shows that memory is not after all 100% accurate and true. Eye witness testimony should not be trusted completely in order to avoid any error in making a final