Schemas Eyewitness Memory

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The aim of this study was to test the effect that schemas have on memory, eyewitness memory in particular. This was carried out by the replication of Loftus’s and Palmer’s (1974) study on schemas and eyewitness testimony. Participants in this study were high school students from the 11th grade that volunteered to take part in the experiment. This replication involved having participants divided into two conditions: the first condition would watch a video of an automobile accident, then would answer a questionnaire about the video, including a question that asked to estimate the cars’ speed when they smashed into each other; while the second condition would watch the same video and answer the same questionnaire, with the key difference being

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