1. Outline and evaluate research into the effects of leading questions on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony (8 marks)

Inaccurate eyewitness testimony is the main reason for false convictions. Therefore, it is important research investigates how the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies can be affected. Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) research seeks to explain why eyewitness testimonies may be inaccurate by looking at the effect of leading questions. Participants were shown a video of a car crash and then questioned, the critical question being about the speed of the car. Each of the five groups of participants, had watched the same clip, but had a different verb in the critical question: 'smashed' 'collided' 'bumped' 'hit' or 'contacted'. Results showed that the verb 'smashed' had the highest speed estimate and ‘contacted’ had the lowest. This demonstrates that memory can be influenced and altered by the way a question is asked. In a second experiment the possible verbs in the critical question were either ‘smashed’ or ‘hit’ and a week later participants were asked if they saw broken glass when in fact there wasn't any. Results showed that the people who had been given the word 'smashed' were more likely to reported seeing broken than those in the ‘hit’ condition. This shows leading questions can even create false memories.In evaluation, these studies are laboratory experiments with a video of a crash rather than the actual event. Therefore, some people have argued, because of this, the experiments lack ecological validity and so the accuracy of the results may not be high. This is because in a real event, a witness of a crash may feel a heightened emotional state and thus their recall accuracy may be different. Indeed, the stress of a real-life event, has been shown to positively affect memory (Yuille and Cutshall, 1986) . So, laboratory results may not be able to generalise to real life. However, a good thing about laboratory experiments is that they can be replicated better and if real life events were used there would be the problem of lack of control and extraneous variables would interfere. Therefore, a strength is that this is a laboratory experiment so it is reliable and replicable. Furthermore, another strength is that it has practical applications to the real world, showing eyewitness testimonies may be influenced by the questions.