develops over a lifetime, giving meaning to events, telling you how to
behave and what to expect. They are also believed to influence what we
think we have seen and how we recall it. Stereotypes also fall into the
category of schemas as they summarise information and represent
different classes of people regarding their characteristics such as race
and gender.
In 1932, Bartlett read ‘War of the Ghosts’, a Native American tale,
to a group of English participants and then asked them to recall it twenty
hours later. The results from this recall showed that he original tale had
become distorted in memory, as the tale was shortened and now
reflected a Westernised/British culture. Phrases were changed for
example ‘canoes’ to ‘boats’, unfamiliar names were not recalled and details
which were remembered were elaborated upon.
From Bartlett’s results in this study we cannot assume that memory
is like a videotape as recall is not always perfect because it is constantly
being influenced by schemas and being reconstructed.
The use of different types of language in questioning procedures
can therefore influence an eyewitness’s schema causing it to change and
make the witness believe they have seen something that they have not
seen, resulting in an inaccurate eye witness testimony.
Schemas can therefore be used to explain how memory can be
influenced at encoding and recall, possibly leading to an inaccurate eye
witness testimony.
Loftus and Palmer (1974) investigated how the language used whilst
questioning eyewitnesses may affect their recall of an event.
Participants were shown series of slides of a car accident and then
were asked specific questions about what they had seen.
During the questioning of the participants, verbs in the questions
such as ‘hit’ were changed to ‘smash’. One week later they were asked
whether they had seen any broken glass. Thirty two percent of those
with ‘smash’ in the question said they had seen broken glass and fourteen
percent of those with ‘hit’ in the question said they had seen glass, when
in actual fact, there was no glass present in any of the slides they had
seen one week earlier.
These results from Loftus and Palmer (1974) show us that leading
questions affect post event information (eye witness testimonies) causing
them to change and make the gained information inaccurate, which could
lead to an injustice.
This research is therefore shows us that the way a witness is
questioned is very important as to the accuracy of his or her eye witness
testimony. As the language used during questioning, whether leading or
misleading, can cause a person’s schema and memory of an incident to
change and incorporate details which they did not actually see, resulting
in an inaccurate eye witness testimony which consequently is of no use in
a court case or any other legal proceeding.
