Psyc 4400: Homework #1
a. What is the overall purpose or goal of this paper? Overall, Elizabeth Loftus wanted to see how differently worded questions (containing either true or false presuppositions) asked directly after an event influence the witnesses’ responses when asked at a later date. Loftus’ concern wasn’t on the effect of how a question was worded, but on the answers to subsequent questions
b. Study specifics
i. Experiment 1
1. Research Question- Does the wording of a true presupposition (which either does or does not get mentioned) into an initial question influence answers to questions asked at a later date?
2. Method Summary (important info only) - Students (150) were shown a video of a multiple-car accident due to one car not stopping at a stop sign and making a right turn into the main traffic. The video is less than one minute long and the multiple-car accident happens in a period of four seconds. Afterwards, the students are given a ten item questionnaire with a diagram labeling the scene. Questions asked are either about how fast the car was going when it ran the stop sign or when it turned right. Seventy-five received the stop sign question and seventy-five received the turned right question, the last question was neutral.
3. Summary of important results- Fifty-three percent students who received the stop sign question responded yes to if they saw a stop sign. Thirty-five percent students who received the turn right question said they saw a stop sign.
After reading “Driving While Stupid,” by Dave Barry, he tells us about some of his experience with seeing bad drivers. Barry uses many old experiences while being in Miami, China, Boston, and Argentina. I agree with this statement because in almost every city I been in the driving was terrible. Everyone, in some way or another, has witnessed people drive very stupid and reckless. Barry indicated that some drivers use insane driving techniques. These include driving very fast, failure of the utilization of headlights at night, and having distractions for the view of the drivers. He says that the drivers do not have a sequence for navigation since some are involved in phone calls, eating, reading, changing CDs, crowd surface makeup, etc. This is a common thing for teens and even adults to be distracted behind the wheel. He drove through various cities where the traffic laws are constantly being violated. For example, has only one traffic law, which is “No driver may ever be behind any other driver.” In his opinion, Miami drivers are the worst drivers that he has ever witness because of the guy who was driving on 1-95. He was watching videos on his phone and was clearly not paying attention to the road or any other drivers. This does not only affect him but also the other people around him. He was not be cautious of the road and putting his and others lives in danger.
It seems each year that the automobile accidents increase, and there are a high number of death and injuries that follow. Records show that nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes and 20-50 million are injured. More than half of all traffic death occur among young adults 15-44 years of age( ). Accidents can happen at any time and can be caused by many reasons such as rain, speeding, drug, or alcohol. An automobile accident is what brought the 16-year-old boy to the emergency to be care for by the medical staff there. The patient was seen by the ER staff for several hours, and he was admitted later in the inpatient unit for observation. The next morning when staff tried waking the patient he was died.
Through four groundbreaking experiments, Loftus, was able to demonstrate the power that questions containing presuppositions had in the reconstruction of an eyewitness’s memory. In each study, a group of participants watched a film and were given a questionnaire afterwards. Each questionnaire contained a critical question where half of the participants received a false presupposition with, while the other half of the group received a question worded in accordance with the reality of the film. The independent variable for the experiments was the wording of the questions.
The reviewed article is about a study in which children of two different age groups, and a group of adults were asked general-to-specific questions and misleading questions in an interview to see if the timing of the misleading questions and temperament affected the quality of the witness’s testimony. The researchers hypothesized that the use of misleading questions by interviewer’s causes the witness to unwittingly incorporate false information into their testimony.
To test their hypothesis, they asked participants to estimate the speed of cars using different types of questions. The study consisted of two different experiments. The first experiment involved 45 American students watching 7 different video clips of traffic incidents. The participants were asked to answer specific questions about what they saw in the clips, including the key question “about how fast were the cars travelling when they “verb” into each other?” The independent variable being the verb i.e. Smashed, collided, bumped, hit and contacted.
Procedure - Participants shown seven videos of car crashes ranging from 4 to 30 seconds long. The videos were excerpts from drivers ed courses so the researchers were aware of the speeds of the cars. The videos were shown to the participants in random order. After each video participants were given a questionnaire which asked them to give an account of the film they had seen. Then they were asked to answer some questions based on what they had seen. Most of the questions were 'filler
Each year numerous lives are lost due to careless and irrational driving. The disregard for safe driving has been a predicament to the United States of America for years. Many years Police have relied heavily on speed cameras, breathalyzer tests and heavy fines as a deterrent against unlawful drivers. Over the years fatality rates have increased, so the Department of Transportation and Highway Safety has composed a series of safe driving campaigns. On many occasions the Transportation Department informs and advises the public about the importance of responsible driving. They propagate safe driving through the various channels of the media and
Experiment 1 comprised of Forty-Five students, they were split into groups of various sizes and were shown seven short clips ranging from 5 to 30 seconds of road traffic collisions. Each participant would then receive a questionnaire following each film
Is our justice system fair? Is our justice system truly set out to do what it was meant to do? Or are there social factors and memory errors that come into play that can change a conviction outcome. In today’s court rooms we have, Defense attorneys, Prosecutors, judges, juries, evidence, forensics experts, witness testimonies, and of course the human memory. What better type of evidence than the human memory, right? Unfortunately, human memory is subject to the power of suggestion and unable to truly recall an event when told to recall. In other words, the story may not be the same as the one that actually happened the day of that event because many variables come into play like cross examinations and the way a question can be asked can alter the answer or how the event was perceived. The main focus of this paper is to see how the human brain is not able to effectively recall events which could possibly convict an innocent person of wrong doing. Also how lawyers use the misinformation effect to their advantage. In order to understand how something as simple as a question can decide a person’s faith we must first answer some questions. First, How does memory actually work and how is memory retrieved when your need to answer a question or being cross examined? Second, how does the misinformation effect play a role when a witness needs to testify against the defense or vice versa? Third, how can structuring a word or sentence effect the outcome of a conviction?
Motor vehicles accidents are the leading cause of death and injury in the United States and is also the leading cause of death for children and young adults ages 4 through 35 (Beck, 2009, p. 312). In 2014, 209 children ranging in ages 0 to 14 years of age died in car accidents due to people driving while impaired (Impaired, 2014). Of those accidents, 116 children were driving in the same car with the impaired driver (Impaired, 2014). Since 2001, alcohol related fatalities have only gone down slightly, compared to motor vehicle accidence in general, which have gone down tremendously over the years (Chambers, 2011).
In chapter six, Sire seeks out to find if worldviews can have both a private and public set of assumptions, as well as if they represent objective or only subjective frameworks. His conclusion is that everyone has a worldview, which is individual to that person, but what about a public shared worldview? While there are individual assumptions to each person’s worldview that may differ, Sire claims that culture shares common presuppositions (i.e., there are sets of assumptions within each society that the culture at large holds). While each worldview will vary in degrees to what is truly subjective or objective, Sire says what is actually there is at least objective to everyone. While the Christian worldview starts with objective reality, there
Death among U.S. teens is led by vehicle crashes. In the year of 2013, around 2,163 teens were killed between the ages of 16-10 in the United States. Around 243,243 were treated in emergency departments for injuries that they suffered in motor vehicle accidents. Around 75% of teen drivers suffer in these accidents due to 3 major mistakes. Those major mistakes include a lack of scanning the road, distractions in the vehicle, and also going to fast for the conditions of the road.
Background and Audience Relevance: According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2015, about thirty-five hundred people were killed, and four hundred thousand were injured in car crashes.
It must be noted that cars are dangerous vehicles which can cause fatal damage. Individuals responsible for a vehicle are expected to be more alert than pedestrians walking down the street or crossing the road, this is known as “destructive disparity”. This
Third reason of accidents on the road is teenage drivers. “2,739 teenagers died in car accidents in the United States during 2008 ", (drivesteady.com). Some teenagers cause fatal accidents, because of immaturity and lack of experience. Teenagers are very impulsive. Although not intending to hurt anyone, they sometimes drive very aggressively. It is not difficult to find teenagers driving with one hand on the steering wheel, seat pushed back, and with loud music playing. In traffic they go wild, trying to seek attention. They underestimate the risk of what they are doing. All these acts result in serious consequences on the road. Many accidents of young drivers result from their own mistakes.