Outline and evaluate the effects of misleading questions on the accuracy of EWT

Can somone please tell me how this looks and how marks I would get for A01 and A02? Thank you

Loftus and palmer were interested in seeing how misleading questions affected eyewitness testimony, they conducted a lab experiment in which 45 students were shown films of traffic accidents, they were then asked a question about how fast the car was going, students were either given the verb hit, smashed, contacted, collided or bumped. The group with smashed estimated the highest speed whereas the group given the word contacted estimated the lowest speed, this suggests that leading questions have a significant effect on memory. Loftus et al conducted another lab experiment to assess the affect of misleading info on EWT. Participants were shown a photo of a car at a junction with either a stop or yield sign, they were then asked questions that were either consistant (matched the sign they saw) or inconsistant (did not match the photo they saw). They were then shown two pairs of photos and were asked to identify the original photos; those given inconsistant questions were 41% correct in their recall compared to 75% when consistant questions were used. Loftus suggested that the misleading info replaced the true information from the memory. AO1

Loftus' studies successfully shows the negative effect misleading questions have on EWT, however they lack validity. The experiments were lab experiments - it is not replicable to real life because in a lab experiement the participants are not as emotionaly aroused as they would be in real life, the studies therefore lack ecological validity and cannot be generalised to real accidents. Another issue is demand characteristics, participants cannot identify the true speed on a video therefore they use the verbs as cues to make a decision. Bekerian found an inconsistancy in loftus' study about the stop signs. When the participants were asked to recall the correct photo in Loftus' study, the slides were presented in random order however Bekerian gave the slides in the original order and found the accuracy of recall was the same regardless of misleading questions. This concludes that misleading questions affect retrieval of info rather than their storage. AO2