Aim: To investigate the accuracy of recall in eyewitnesses to a real crime, in response to leaning questions over time. In this study the crime was a real gun shooting
Principle: Humans are active processors of information
Method: Field experiment. 13 witnesses were interviewed 4-5 months after they witnesses a fatal shooting of a thief who was shot by the owner of a gun shop after being robbed and having money stolen. They underwent the same interview procedure as the police (allowing them to give their account and then asking questions). 2 leading questions were used. ½ of the group were asked if they saw a broken headlight. The other ½ were asked if they saw the broken headlight (when there was no broken headlight on the thief’s vehicle). They were also questioned about stress
Findings: The participants had very accurate and detailed descriptions of the event. They were also asked about the colour of the blanket on the body (seen as details that didn’t matter to police) and they found that over time the memory of the situation was maintained. They concluded that memory retention was largely due to relation/involvement in the situation. The misleading questions had very little effect on recall. 10 participants were unaffected by the questions.
+ higher validity than Loftus
- Difficult to generalize due to one-off nature of the situation
- Weakness in scoring (The thief was 35 years old, and the participants said he looked mid-twenties and despite him looking in his mid-twenties this was counted as incorrect)