In 2002, Loftus wrote an article on the case of a Washington DC sniper who killed a number of people. The police asked people to come forward with information on the murderer and many reported having seen a white van in the vicinity of the shootings. In fact, the sniper’s van was a blue Chevrolet Caprice. Loftus tried to find out where the myth of the white van came from. She discovered that a bystander had mentioned a white van in an interview. After this, other people reported that they had seen a white van.

Loftus supports Bartlett’s idea of memory as reconstructive. Loftus claims that the nature of questions asked by police or in a courtroom can influence witnesses’ memory. Leading questions - that is, questions that are suggestive in some way - and post-event information facilitate schema processing which may influence the accuracy of recall. This is called the misinformation effect.

Witnesses are often quite confident of what they remember even though their recollections don’t fit the actual facts.  When witnesses try to retrieve a past event, they may unknowingly fill in the gaps with information based on other past experience, stereotypes or post-event information. Post-event information is any information that you are exposed to after you have witnessed something. This information can come in the form of television or social media reports - or from listening to other people tell their stories.

When eyewitnesses' memories are distorted, it can have very damaging effects. One of the most famous cases of the effect of memory distortion on the life of an individual is the story of Ronald Cotton.

 Teacher only box

1.  What factors do you think had the greatest influence on the distortion of Jennifer Thompon's memory?

Perhaps the most significant factor is that she was determined to identify and convict her rapist. Her sense of confidence that she had memorized his face became part of her narrative. And she told the police that she would be able to identify him. In addition, there were several things that the police did that influenced her memory - the creation of a composite image, the use of a photo line-up, the use of a physical line up, telling her that "it was the same person you picked out from the photos," and then later - that any evidence that she was wrong would challenge her integrity as a witness.

2. Do you think that the police could have done something differently that would have prevented Ronald Cotton from going to prison?

There are many potential issues. First, there is the creation of a composite image. There is contradictory evidence with regard to whether this can distort memory.  You might want to share these two studies with students. Mcquiston and Topp (2019) found that composite images distort memory; Pike et al (2019) found that it did not.

The use of a set of photos or a lineup both allowed Jennifer to make comparisons and make her decision by the process of elimination - this, plus the feedback from the police - created a false memory of the perpetrator.  Presenting photos one by one - or using a serial lineup - has been shown to be more effective.

However, one of the bottom lines of this story is that the two men did actually look very similar.  So, it is difficult to say that her memory was highly distorted. The interesting part of the story was her inability to have emotional closure when she found out that they caught the true rapist. The emotional connection to her new memory and the closure that came with his conviction was a powerful factor in Jennifer's story.

3.  Based on this story, how do you feel about the use of eyewitness testimony in courtrooms?

Students will have a range of thinking on this topic.  Obviously, eyewitness testimony plays an important role in solving crimes.  The question is not if we should use eyewitness testimony, but how it should be used.

Such stories of false identification by eyewitnesses inspired Elisabeth Loftus to carry out a series of studies that highlighted the problem of leading questions in eyewitness testimony.  Leading questions are questions which either by the form or the content suggest to a witness which answer is desired.

Previous research has demonstrated that people’s memory of details after a car accident is inaccurate. Since previous research had shown that estimation of speed was liable to distortion Loftus and Palmer hypothesized that people’s memory for details of an accident could be distorted if they were asked to estimate how fast the car was going. Therefore, they set up two experiments where participants were shown videos of traffic accidents and after that, they had to answer questions about the accident. The study demonstrates the role that schema can play in how we recall an event.

The Counterargument - memory is reliable

In response to Loftus's research, Yuille and Cutshall (1986) carried out an experiment where they examined whether leading questions would affect the memory of eyewitnesses at a real crime scene. The crime scene was in Vancouver. A thief entered a gun shop and tied up the owner before stealing money and guns from the shop. The owner freed himself, and thinking that the thief had escaped, went outside the shop. But the thief was still there and shot him twice. Police had been called and there was gunfire - and the thief was eventually killed. As the incident took place in front of the shop, there were eyewitnesses - 21 were interviewed by the police.

The researchers contacted the eyewitnesses four months after the event. 13 of the eyewitnesses agreed to be interviewed as part of a study. They gave their account of the incident, and then they were asked questions. Two leading questions were used. Half the group was asked if they saw a broken headlight on the getaway car. The other half was asked if they saw a yellow panel on the car (the panel was actually blue). They were also asked to rate their stress on a seven-point scale.

It was found that eyewitnesses were actually very reliable. They recalled a large amount of accurate detail that could be confirmed by the original police reports. They also did not make errors as a result of the leading questions and those who were most distressed by the situation had the most accurate memories.

What are the key differences between Yuille and Cutshall's (1986) and Loftus & Palmer's (1974) experiments?

First, Yuille & Cutshall's study had stronger ecological validity in comparison to Loftus & Palmer's laboratory study. Because they had actually witnessed a crime, they would have had an emotional response that is very different from what the students felt watching videos of drivers' education car crashes. In addition, there was archival evidence (police records of the original testimonies) to confirm the accuracy of the testimonies.

However, Loftus and Palmer's study has a higher level of reliability.  Yuille and Cutshall's study is not replicable and also not generalizable since it was a one-off incident. There was also no control of variables, so it is difficult to know the level of rehearsal that was used by the different eyewitnesses. It could be that those that agreed to be in the study had spent the most time thinking and reading about the case.

It may very well be that different types of memory are more reliable than others. As we saw in the case study of HM, although he had lost his declarative memories, he was still able to learn procedural memories. This clearly indicates that different memories may be located in different parts of the brain - and that they also may have different levels of reliability.