Loftus And Palmer's Experiments

The idea of Loftus and Palmers investigations of the two experiments were to show how the information given by an eyewitness can be affected from different perspectives. The main focus of the experiments had been to give groups of students misleading information by both verbally wording of specific questions and also visual imagery in relation to bystander or eyewitness testimony. To test this, they had asked people to estimate the speed of motor vehicles using different forms of questions. During experiment number one, Loftus and Palmer’s goals were to test that the language used against the eyewitness testimony can alter the memory of the accident. They designed this to show that leading questions could misrepresent the testimony of the bystander, causing the results of the experiment to be distorted by the given indications provided in the question. They were asked specific questions such as “About how fast were the cars going when they [smashed/collided/ bumped/ hit/ contacted] each other?”
The results of the first trial showed that the speed that was …show more content…
The students were then asked a questionnaire at the end of the video. In this case, the independent variable would be they type of question that is being asked- which was manipulated by asking one group: “how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”, and another group was asked “how fast were the cars going when they smashed each other?”, the last group of students were not asked any questions (this would be the control group). One week later, the group was asked if there was any broken glass in the video, without seeing it again. Originally, there was no broken glass. Because of these questions, Loftus and Palmer were able to find that the students who had been asked how fast the cars were going when it smashed… said that they did see broken