- Age of witness: Age of witness can be one of many factors on eyewitness testimony. We have to keep in mind that if our witnesses are older they might have illnesses that can effect their memory.
- Anxiety: People who were subjected to the highest levels of anxiety were nearest to the incident so would have been able to see more clearly what happened.
Loftus
Aim:
The aim of this study was to investigate how information supplied after an event, influences a witness's memory for that event.
The study actually consists of two laboratory experiments. They are both examples of an independent measures design. The independent variable in both of the experiments is the verb used. The dependent variable in the first experiment is the participant’s speed estimate and the dependent variable in the second experiment is whether the participant believed they saw glass.
First Experiment:
Procedure:
The participants were 45 students of the University of Washington. They were each shown seven film-clips of traffic accidents. The clips were short excerpts from safety films made for driver education. The clips ranged from 5 to 30 seconds long.
Following each clip, the students were asked to write an account of the accident they had just seen. They were also asked to answer some specific questions but the critical question was to do with the speed of the vehicles involved in the collision.
Second Experiment
Procedure:
The second experiment was to provide additional insights into the origin of the different speed estimates. In particular they wanted to find out if the participants memories really had been distorted by the verbal label.
A similar procedure was used whereby 150 student participants viewed a short (one minute) film which contained a 4 second scene of a multiple car accident, and were then questioned about it.
Findings: They found that the more they get told about the accident the more they believe that what they are told is true, and therefore believe they've seen it.
- Malene Leivestad