Introduction To An Investigation Of The Misinformation Effect On Memory

When we retrieve and reconstruct memories, distortions can creep in without explicit external influence, and these can become pieces of misinformation. When misinformation is accepted and incorporated into a person’s recollection, it increases as a function of the delay between the witnessed event and exposure to misinformation, presumably because memory for the original event becomes weaker over time (Loftus et al. 1978). According to Wayne Weiten (2010), the definition of misinformation effect is that it happens when our recall of episodic memories become less accurate because of post-event information.

The first exposure of misinformation effect can date back to year 1975, where Elizabeth Loftus, in her seminal work on the topic of the malleability of memory, has unintentionally opened this area of study that sparks psychologists’ interest for over 20 years. One of Loftus’s earliest experiments on malleability of memory was conducted together with her colleague John Palmer (Loftus and Palmer, 1974). This experiment has set the foundation to investigate the extent that memories for events can be altered by subsequent exposure to misinformation about those events.

After watching a videotape of automobile collision, participants were asked to answer a questionnaire. Loftus and Palmer found that wording of a suggestive question could influence the likelihood of people’s reporting that they saw things that has not occurred. Specifically, those who experienced the question suggesting that the cars in the film ‘smashed’ into each other were more likely to falsely remember that they had seen broken glass (Law et al., 2010). This suggests that material of the previous question can communicate information about the answer o...

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...question of control group: About how fast was the red car going when it contacted the white car?

The dependent variable would be the total number of responds of ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ of this subsequent question, ‘Did you see any broken glass?’ that is later asked in the questionnaire (there was not any broken glass).

[One tailed test will be used to analyze the data collected in this experiment. This is because not only we predicted there would be differences between the two groups under two different suggestive questions conditions, we also specify in which direction the differences will exist.] – I am confused whether this part is needed.

Experimental hypothesis: The use of the word ‘smashed into’ in the critical question will make participants more likely to recall they have seen broken glass and respond ‘Yes” than if the word ‘contacted’ is used.