Lina Jones

September 8th 2014

Justice Morath
Psychology 1010
Lab One: Memory
In the article Leading Questions and the Eyewitness Report Elizabeth Loftus conducts
four experiments to test weather the wording of questions asked right after an event will affect
the responses of questions asked a week after the event. These four experiments she conducts are
testing memory recall. Loftus' experiment is essentially testing the accuracy of eye witness
memory.
In experiment one, one hundred and fifty college students were shown a short film of a
car accident in which car A ran a stop sign and turned right into oncoming traffic causing a five
car bumper-to-bumper collision. Immediately after the film they we're given ten questions to
answer. Seventy-five students received a question asking "How fast was car A going when it ran
the stop sign?" The other seventy-five students received a question asking "How fast was car A
going when it turned right?" All one hundred and fifty students received a question asking "Did
you see a stop sign for car A?"
Experiment two showed forty college students a clip from the movie Diary of a Student
Revolution where eight demonstrators caused a disruption in a classroom and left. After the clip
was shown the students were given a questionnaire containing one key question and nineteen
filler questions. Half the students received the key question asking "Was the leader of the four
demonstrators who entered the classroom a male?", and the other have received the key question
asking "Was the leader of the twelve demonstrators who entered the classroom a male?" A week

later the subjects returned to answer another questionnaire without reviewing the clip. The
critical question asked was "How many demonstrators did you see entering the room?"
Experiment three consisted of one hundred and fifty college students who were shown a
video of a car accident and then asked ten questions with the critical question involving the speed
of the white sports car. Seventy-five students were asked "How fast was the white sports car
going when it passed the barn while traveling along the country road?" The other seventy-five
were asked "How fast was the white sports car going while traveling along the country road?" A
week later all the students were given another questionnaire containing the critical question "Did
you see a barn?"
Experiment four studied the answers of one hundred and fifty college students about a
clip of an accident between a car and man pushing a baby stroller. There were three groups in
this experiment for the questionnaire. The first group of fifty students received forty-five
questions with five direct questions about items not present in the clip. Ex: "Did you see a school
bus in the film?" The second group received the same amount of questions but five of the
questions asked about things not present in the clip in a false presupposition form. Ex: "Did you
see the children getting on the school bus?" The third group just received the forty filler
questions. One week later all the subjects were given twenty questions with the same five direct
questions from group one.
The answers of the students to key questions gave Loftus the ability to demonstrate how
the wording of a question affecting memory recall. In experiment one, of the seventy-five
students in the "stop sign" group fifty-three percent responded yes to seeing a stop sign. Where

as the "turn right" group only had thirty-five percent respond yes. Experiment two had similar
results. The group asked about twelve demonstrators one week later answered on average that
there was about eight demonstrators while the group that was asked about four recalled an
average of six demonstrators.
In experiment three about seventeen percent of subjects, which were asked with a false
presupposition, responded yes a week later to the question "Did you see a barn?". Of the
remanding subjects only about three percent responded yes to the same question a week later.
Finally experiment four really demonstrates that wording can affect memory recall. The false
presupposition group had about thirty percent say yes to seeing nonexistent items. The subjects
exposed to the direct questions had about sixteen percent say yes and the control group only had
about eight percent say yes.
From reading this study it does not seem like there could be any legal implications. No
harm is caused to the subjects by showing clips or asking questions. The subjects identity is also
kept out of the study, although the place where they go to school is mentioned. Mentioning the
school and their status at the school could be a legal implication because it narrows down a
persons ability to find said subject. Other than that it does not seem to have any legal
implications.