Key idea: The environment, such as the words of a question, can change what people remember.
How the environment changes memory
1
Leading questions
The words of a question can add information to a memory.
2
Context
The place where we learned acts as a cue that helps recall.
3
Result
What we recall depends on how and where we are asked, not only on what happened.
Question · Place · Recall
Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed people film of a car crash. Asked how fast the cars 'smashed', they estimated higher speeds, and more said a week later that they had seen broken glass.
Go further: higher-level insight: The new information was added after the event, so the memory changed at recall, not at the crash.
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Key idea: Environmental factors change what people recall, which matters for witnesses; lab studies may overstate the effect.
Strengths
- Controlled experiments show cause
- Direct use for police interviews
- Replicated many times
Limitations
- Film clips lack real emotion
- Students as participants
- Real witnesses may resist
Field studies of real witnesses show that some memories resist misleading questions, especially central details.
Watch out: Name the environmental factor. Say what in the environment changed the memory.