To investigate whether PPs would be
able to accurately recall an even if
asked misleading questions
PROCEDURE
Two groups of PPs were shown a set of slides showing a car accident
Group 1: Saw a red car
stopping by a 'Yield' sign
Half were asked about a 'Yield' sign (consistent) whereas the
other half were asked about a 'Stop' sign (misleading)
Group 2: Saw a red car
stopping by a 'Stop' sign
Half were asked about a 'Stop' sign (consistent) and the
other half were asked about a 'Yield' sign (misleading)
PPs were given 15 pairs of slides of the
event in random order
Had to pick from each pair the slide that was consistent
with what they had seen earlier
One pair consisted of a slide with a 'Yield' sign
and the other slide with a 'Stop' sign
FINDINGS
75% of PPs who got the consistent question
picked the correct slide
Only 41% of the PPs who got the misleading
question picked the correct slide
When the recognition slide test was delayed for a week, the
accuracy of the group of PPs who got the misleading
question fell to 20%
CONCLUSION
Misleading question deleted correct information from
memory and replaced it with false information
Misleading questions mean that original memory is no longer stored
Effect of misleading questions become
more prominent over time
EVALUATION
Supporting study: Loftus & Loftus (1980) - found
that accuracy in the group who were given
misleading information did not increase even when
they were offered money to pick the correct slide
Not everyone who was given misleading
information was inaccurate in the recognition
slide task
The use of static slides does not reflect
real-life situations and therefore we cannot
base EWT on the conclusions
Source misattribution
Misleading questions may cause a problem with source monitoring,
meaning that when individuals are presented with two different/conflicting
information they will mix up where each information came from
BEKERIAN and BOWERS (1983)
Original memory trace is still
available and has not been
deleted and replaced by false
memory
Replicated Loftus' study with the 'Stop' and 'Yield' sign
However, during the recognition slide test,
PPs were presented with the slides in
chronological order
Found that there was not a
significant difference between the
recall accuracy of the misled PPs
and the consistent PPs
Presenting the slides in a chronological
sequence provided cues for the PPs to
reactivate the original memory despite the
misleading information
Other researchers have
failed to replicate the results