However, the high level of control in the experiment created an artificial environment, causing the study to lack ecological validity as the task cannot be generalised to all real life incidents as it didn’t represent everyday events; participants were watching a film rather than watching a real life incident, so the film has less of an emotional impact than a real life incident would. The students were participating in an experiment, so were expecting something to happen and might’ve been paying more attention to what was going on. Also when a watching a film the incident was likely to be far less distressing than it would be in real life and in a real life incident they would be taken by surprise. This could affect their memory for the event.
The participants taking part in the experiment were all university psychology students who knew they were taking part in a laboratory experiment which could’ve affected their behaviour in a number of ways. Demand characteristics could’ve played a part in the results of Loftus’ and Palmer’s study, as students might’ve been looking for clues as to how to behave and social desirability bias might’ve could’ve them to help the experimenters by giving them the results that they think they wanted; adjusting the speed to what they think the experimenter wanted to hear, as they wanted to please the experimenters. The experiment also has low population validity, as the participants were 45 psychology university students and this is unrepresentative as not only students will witness car accidents. A person of a different age group may be either more or less alert, which could cause them to give a different answer. Also, the group of students might be less experienced drivers than the general population, so therefore might be less confident in their ability to estimate speed. This may have led them to be affected by the words used in the questions they were asked. This means the results lacks generalisiabilty. The results could be easily to generalized, but possibly only to students as only students were used; however it would be unrepresentative to generalize to other age groups and occupations.
Yuille and Cutshall (1986) wanted to investigate the accuracy in recall of eyewitnesses to a real crime, in response to leading questions and over time. In this study, the crime was a real gun shooting. They wanted to look at the problems of laboratory research in studying eyewitness testimony, to look at the accuracy of eyewitness accounts and to compare eyewitness accounts taken straight after an incident with those taken four to five months after. Another aim was to see how eyewitness memory could be affected by leading questions.
A man had attempted to rob a shop and during the course of the robbery the shop owner was shot. The experiment conducted by Yuille and Cutshall involved interviewing the 21 witnesses about the incident which had taken place 5 months before research. In a 'police style interview', half of the participants were asked leading questions and participants were also asked about stress levels before and after the incident. To help compare the police and research interviews, a precise scoring procedure was used. Results showed that the researchers recorded more total details than the police and that leading questions did not affect the witness' memories of the incident- Yuille and Cutshall concluded that eyewitness statements are remarkably accurate; more accurate than lab experiments would suggest. Several factors backed up this claim, including correctly recalling large numbers of accurate details.
The experiment had a high level of ecological validity, as the experiment followed a field study design, as it was a real life incident, where real witnesses of a real crime were interviewed, instead of assessing participants in an artificial situation like in a lab experiment. It has the validity lacking in lab experiments. The accuracy of the witnesses in Yuille and Cutshalls study and the lack of effect that the leading questions have upon recall, help support the criticism that laboratory studies lack ecological validity since the findings of such studies appear not to generalise to witnesses of real crimes. The fact the study was a field experiment, might have helped to avoid demand characteristics, as the participants’ being interviewed did not know they were taking part in an experiment, so might probably would’ve told the truth about what they saw.
The scoring procedure allowed for reliable and precise results, as great care was taken when counting the details from the real incident to make sure that the witnesses’ testimonies did not change what really happened. This made findings reliable. Also, the study produced quantitative data from qualitative data, which requires no subjective interpretation, meaning researcher bias was limited and is also easier to base conclusions upon.
However, the study is said to lack generalisability as the case is unique and is a field study, assessing a small sample of real witnesses and it would be difficult to find one naturally occurring again. The results could’ve been because of a case of ‘flashbulb memory’. This suggests that certain events are remembered in more detail and usually and because this was such a traumatic experience for some participants, this might be why they are able to remember what happened so clearly. This explains how those who were closer and more involved in the even remembered more details correctly and were found to be more reliable. However, there is little evidence for flashbulb memory’s as a distinct memory process and even though they might feel accurate, they are just as prone to forgetting & change as other memories.
However, because the study was a field experiment, Yuille and Cutshall had weak control over extraneous variables, so more variables could've become confounding variables in the experiment, affecting the outcome. It would've been much harder to control confounding variables in the experiment, meaning the independant variable might not have even caused the changed in the dependant variable. For example, the age of the participants could’ve affected the experiment, because some older people who were taking part in the experiment might’ve not been that alert, affecting how much attention they paid to the incident and their memory and ability to recall what happened.
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