Design:
The experiment is an independent measures design because it involves us using more than two groups, were each of the participants only ha one condition. Each of the participants received the following question "about how fast was the ca going when they _____ into each other" the independent variable is the verb used to experiment each participant for example "smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contracted". The dependent variable is the speed reported from each of he participant. We followed all of the ethical guidelines, with no harm and unwilling participation of ach participant. Participants were all given an informed consent, and received a brief explanation and the aim of the experiment conducted. Following the experiment all of the participants were debriefed.
Material:
1)Video clip between the range of 15 to 30 seconds.
2)Participants that are willing to participate in the experiment
3)Five different conditiion to ask the following participants
Participants:
The total participant used to conduct were twenty, from the class of 9th and 12th grade from the American School of Tegucigalpa. The range of ages is from 13-18 years old. Twelve of the participants were in the age of 16 thru 18, eight were from the age range of 13 thru 14. All of the participants are bilingual (Spanish/English). The participants are not a representative sample of the school because we only used two grades, and only twenty students from the entire campus. The method used to conduct was an opportunity sampling because it was convenient from us to have at least 16 year of age.
Procedure:
The participants of this experiment are 20 students from the American School of Tegucigalpa. They are shown 1 video clip from an accident that occured in traffic accidents. The video was approximately 30 seconds, it was a accident from the camara of a cop car. After showing them the clip, the participants were asked to answer two questions. One of those questions is the critical one, and this question has to do with the speed that the vehicles crush each other.
The five condition from this experiment are:
Condition 1: about how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other.
Condition 2: about how fast were the cars going when they collided into each other.
Condition 3: about how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other.
Condition 4: about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other.
Condition 5: about how fast were the cars going when they contracted each other.
This means that the question changed from only a verb with "smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contracted"
The original question was:
"About how fast were the cars going when they ^^^^^^ into each other."
The secondary question varied in different way, This were the following question:
Question 1: did you see any tree in the video?
Question 2: did you see any water in the video?
Question 3: did you see any houses in the video?
Question 4: did you see any rain in the video?
Question 5: did you see any white car in the video?
This question were made to undercover the original critical question.
All of the esperiment lasted about 10 minutes, and the video was shown to all of the students at the same time.
Results descriptive:
In the graph below you can see how the phrasing of the question changed the speed estimate between different people. The most highest verb used with a high estimate of speed is the word "contacted". The lowest verb used with a low estimate of speed is the word "bumped" . By this the range between the highest and the lowes is 6.75. The mean of the study is 47.4. The median is 45. Standar deviaton is
Discussion:
In this experiment we can see how a verb we use can change the form we see the things that are really happening. As you can see with the experiment results the word contacted is the one with the highest avarege of miles per hour. This is because the verb contacted means " the act or state of touching, a touching or meeting, as of two things or people." this worb make it sound like if it was a bit harsh into the two cars hittin into each other. The verb bumped was the lowest avarege of miles per hour. The word bumped means " to come more or less violently in contact with" even thought the word bumped means something harsh people don't tend to thing that bumped is someting violently, but they think that it is just something small that collided into each other with no real injury. In the study of Loftus and Palmer the verb smashed was the highest mean estimate, with the difference in our experiment of nine miles per hour for the verb smashed. From the highest of Loftus and Palmer experiment and the highest of our experiment was a difference of 9.95. We several limitation conducting this experiment, we couldn't show the video to all of the participants on the same time, because of the difficulties in schedule of the school. Eventually after this limitation we had to asked them to not comment about the experiment to the future participants. In conclusion people tend to think that the information they supplied after and event, influences a witness memory. This is why the changing in verb can show us the real difference of how people really do tend top change theur mind after an event.
