Harvard University Research Study Replication Proposal Worksheet Using the attached word document, answer the questions regarding recreating the research s

Harvard University Research Study Replication Proposal Worksheet Using the attached word document, answer the questions regarding recreating the research study attached (Lotus and Palmer Article). I have also attached a sample of what this paper should look like.PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE THE FORMAT OF THE WORKSHEET OR REMOVE THE QUESTIONS! JOURNAL OF VERBAL LEARNING AND VERBAL BEHAVIOR
13, 585-589 (1974)
Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction :
A n Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory’
ELIZABETH F. LOFTUS
A N D JOHN C. PALMER
University of Washington
Two experiments are reported in which subjects viewed films of automobile accidents
and then answered questions about events occurring in the films. The question, “About
how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” elicited higher estimates
of speed than questions which used the verbs collided, bumped, contucted, or hit in place of
smashed. On a retest one week later, those subjects who received the verb smashed were
more likely to say “yes” to the question, “Did you see any broken glass?”, even though
broken glass was not present in the film. These results are consistent with the view that the
questions asked subsequent t o an event can cause a reconstruction in one’s memory of that
event.
1
How accurately do we remember the as to how fast a vehicle was actually traveling
details of a complex event, like a traffic (Gardner, 1933). In one test administered to
accident, that has happened in our presence? Air Force personnel who knew in advance
More specifically, how well do we do when that they would be questioned about the speed
asked to estimate some numerical quantity of a moving automobile, estimates ranged
such as how long the accident took, how fast from 10 to 50 mph. The car they watched was
the cars were traveling, or how much time actually going only 12 mph (Marshall, 1969,
elapsed between the sounding of a horn and p. 23).
Given the inaccuracies in estimates of
the moment of collision?
It is well documented that most people are speed, it seems likely that there are variables
markedly inaccurate in reporting such numeri- which are potentially powerful in terms of
cal details as time, speed, and distance (Bird, influencing these estimates. The present
1927; Whipple, 1909). For example, most research was conducted to investigate one
people have difficulty estimating the duration such variable, namely, the phrasing of the
of an event, with some research indicating that question used to elicit the speed judgment.
the tendency is to overestimate the duration of Some questions are clearly more suggestive
events which are complex (Block, 1974; than others. This fact of life has resulted in
Marshall, 1969; Ornstein, 1969). The judg- the legal concept of a leading question and in
ment of speed is especially difficult, and legal rules indicating when leading questions
practically every automobile accident results are allowed (Supreme Court Reporter, 1973).
in huge variations from one witness to another A leading question is simply one that, either
This research was supported by the Urban Mass by its form or content, suggests to the witness
Transportation Administration, Department of Trans- what answer is desired or leads him to the
portation, Grant No. WA-11-0004. Thanks go to desired answer.
Geoffrey Loftus, Edward E. Smith, and Stephen
In the present study, subjects were shown
Woods for many important and helpful comments,
films of traffic accidents and then they
Reprint requests should be sent to Elizabeth F. Loftus.
answered questions about the accident. The
Department of Psychology, University of Washington,
subjects were interrogated about the speed of
Seattle, Washington 981 95.
Copyright 0 1974 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
Printed in Great Britain
585
586
LOFTUS AND PALMER
the vehicles in one of several ways. For
example, some subjects were asked, “About
how fast were the cars going when they hit
each other?” while others were asked, “About
how fast were the cars going when they
smashed into each other?” As Fillmore (1971)
and Bransford and McCarrell (in press) have
noted, hit and si.r.lasl?ed may involve specification of differential rates of movement.
Furthermore, the two verbs may also involve
differential specification of the likely consequences of the events to which they are
referring. The impact of the accident is
apparently gentler for hit than for .n~ia.dtctI.
EXPERIMENT 1
Metliod
Forty-five students participated in groups of
various sizes. Seven films were shown, each
depicting a traffic accident. These films were
segments from longer driver’s education
f i l m borrowed from the Evergreen Safety
Council and the Seattle Police Department.
The length of the film segments ranged from
5 to 30 sec. Following each film, the subjects
received a questionnaire asking then1 first to,
“give an account of the accident you have just
seen,“ and then to answer a series of specific
questions about the accident. The critical
question was the one that interrogated the
subject about the speed of the vehicles involved
in the collision. Nine subjects were asked,
“About how fast were the cars going when they
hit each other?” Equal numbers of the
remaining subjects were interrogated with
the verbs smashed, collided, buiiiped, and
contacted in place of hit. The entire experiment
lasted about an hour and a half. A different
ordering of the films was presented to each
group of subjects.
R esiilt s
Table 1 presents the mean speed estimates
for the various verbs. Following the procedures outlined by Clark (1973), an analysis
of variance was performed with verbs as a
fixed effect, and subjects and films as random
TABLE 1
S PEED ESTIMATES
FOR T H E VERBS
USED IN E XPERIMENT 1
Verb
Mean speed estimate
Sinas hed
Collided
Bumpcd
Hit
Contacted
40.5
39.3
38.1
34.0
31.8
efTects, yielding a significant quasi F ratio,
!“(5,55) = 4.65,p < .005. Some information about the accuracy of subjects’ estimates can be obtained from our data. Four of the seven films were staged crashes; the original purpose of these films was to illustrate what can happen to human beings when cars collide at various speeds. One collision took place at 20 mph, one at 30, and two at 40. The mean estimates of speed for these four films were: 37.7, 36.2, 39.7, and 36.1 mph, respectively. In agreement with previous work, people are not very good at judging how fast a vehicle was actually traveling. Discussioii The results of this experiment indicate that the form of a question (in this case, changes in a single word) can markedly and systematically affect a witness’s answer to that question. The actual speed of the vehicles controlled little variance in subject reporting, while the phrasing of the question controlled considerable variance. Two interpretations of this finding are possible. First, it is possible that the differential speed estimates result merely from response-bias factors. A subject is uncertain whether to say 30 mph or 40 mph, for example, and the verb siiiaslied biases his response towards the higher estimate. A second inter- Ps pretation is that the question form causes a change in the subject’s memory representation of the accident. The verb siiiashed may change a subject’s memory such that he II 1 1 587 LANGUAGE A N D MEMORY CHANGES “sees” the accident as being more severe than it actually was. If this is the case, we might expect subjects to “remember” other details that did not actually occur, but are commensurate with an accident occurring at higher speeds. The second experiment was designed to provide additional insights into the origin of the differential speed estimates. with hit the estimate was 8.00 mph. These means are significantly different, t (98) = 2.00, p < -05. TABLE 2 D ISTRIBUTION OF “YES” PONSES TO THE A NY AND “NO” QUESTION, “DID BROKEN GLASS?’ YOU R ESSEE Verb condition E XPERIMENT I1 Method Response Smashed Hit Control ~One hundred and fifty students participated Yes 16 7 6 in this experiment, in groups of various sizes. No 34 43 44 A film depicting a multiple car accident was shown, followed by a questionnaire. The film Table 2 presents the distribution of ‘.yes” lasted less than 1 min; the accident in the film and “no” responses for the smashed, Itit, and lasted 4 sec. At the end of the film, the subjects control subjects. An independence chi-square received a questionnaire asking them first to on these responses was significant beyond test describe the accident in their own words, and the .025 level, ~ ~ ( =2 7.76. ) The important then to answer a series of questions about the 2 i s that the probability of result in Table accident. The critical question was the one P(Y), to the question about saying “yes,” that interrogated the subject about the speed .32 when the verb sn?a.died is broken glass is of the vehicles. Fifty subjects were asked, used, and .14 with hit. Thus smashed leads “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” Fifty subjects both to more “yes” responses and to higher were asked, “About how fast were the cars speed estimates. It appears to be the case that going when they hit each other?” Fifty the effect of the verb is mediated at least in subjects were not interrogated about vehicular part by the speed estimate. The question now arises : Is sniushed doing anything else besides speed. One week later, the subjects returned and increasing the estimate of speed? To answer without viewing the film again they answered this, the function relating P(Y) to speed a series of questions about the accident, The estimate was calculated separately for stiiashed critical question here was, “Did you see any and hit. If the speed estimate is the only way broken glass?” which the subjects answered in which effect of verb is mediated, then for a by checking “yes” or “no.” This question was given speed estimate, P(Y) should be inembedded in a list totalling 10 questions, and dependent of verb. Table 3 shows that this is it appeared in a random position in the list. TABLE 3 There was no broken glass in the accident, PROBABILITY OF SAYING “YES” TO, “D ID Y O U SEE but, since broken glass is commensurate with A NY B R O K ~ G N L A SS ?’ CONDIT~ONALIZED ON S PEED accidents occurring at high speed, we expected E STIMATES that the subjects who had been asked the smashed question might more often say “yes” Speed estimate (mph) k to this critical question. Verb -Results The mean estimate of speed for subjects interrogated with smaslted was 10.46 mph; condition 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 Smashed Hit .09 .06 .27 .09 .41 .25 .62 .50 588 LOFTUS AP4D PALMER not the case. P(Y) is lower for hit than for smashed; the difference between the two verbs ranges from .03 for estimates of 1-5 mph t o .I8 for estimates of 6-10 mph. The average difference between the two curves is about .12. Whereas the unconditional difference of . I8 between the smashed and hit conditions is attenuated, it is by no means eliminated when estimate of speed is controlled for. It thus appears that the verb smashed has other effects besides that of simply increasing the estimate of speed. One possibility will be discussed in the next section. DISCUSSION To reiterate, we have first of all provided a n additional demonstration of something that has been known for some time, namely, that the way a question is asked can enormously influence the answer that is given. In this instance, the question, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” led to higher estimates of speed than the same question asked with the verb smashed replaced by hit. Furthermore, this seemingly small change had consequences for how questions are answered a week after the original event occurred. As a framework for discussing these results, we would like to propose that two kinds of information go into one’s memory for some complex occurrence. The first is information gleaned during the perception of the original event; the second is external information supplied after the fact. Over time, information from these two sources may be integrated in such a way that we are unable to tell from which source some specific detail is recalled. All we have is one “memory.” Discussing the present experiments in these terms, we propose that the subject first forms some representation of the accident he has witnessed. The experimenter then, while asking, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” supplies a piece of external information, namely, that the cars did indeed smash into each other. When these two pieces of information are integrated, the subject has a memory of an accident that was more severe than in fact it was. Since broken glass is commensurate with a severe accident, the subject is more likely to think that broken glass was present. There is some connection between the present work and earlier work on the influence of verbal labels on memory for visually presented form stimuli. A classic study in psychology showed that when subjects are asked to reproduce a visually presented form, their drawings tend to err in the direction of a more familiar object suggested by a verbal label initially associated with the to-beremembered form (Carmichael, Hogan, & Walter, 1932). More recently, Daniel (1972) showed that recognition memory, as well as reproductive memory, was similarly affected by verbal labels, and he concluded that the verbal label causes a shift in the memory strength of forms which are better representatives of the label. When the experimenter asks the subject, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”, he is effectively labeling the accident a smash. Extrapolating the conclusions of Daniel to this situation, it is natural to conclude that the label, smash, causes a shift in the memory representation of the accident in the direction of being more similar to a representation suggested by the verbal label. R EFERENCES BIRD, C. The influence of the press upon the accuracy of report. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1927,22, 123-129. BLOCK, R . A. Memory and the experience of duration in retrospect. Memory & Cogtiition, 1974, 2, I 53-1 60. B RANSFORD , J. D., & MCCARRELL, N. S.A sketch of a cognitive approach to comprehension : Some thoughts about understanding what it means to comprehend. In D. Palerrno & W. Weimer (Eds.), Cognition arid the synibolic processes. Washington, D.C.: V . H. Winston & Co., in press. 3 L., HO(iAN, I I. l'., & WAI I I I(, A . A . experimental study of the etl'ect ol' language 011 the reproduction of visually perceived form. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1932, 15, 73-86. CLARK, H. H. The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A 3 critique of language statistics in psychological research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1973,12,335-359. DANIEL, T. C. Nature of the effect of verbal labels on recognition memory for form. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1972,96, 152-157. FILLMORE, C. J. Types of lexical information. In D. D. Steinberg and L. A. Jakobovits (Eds.), Semantics: An interdisciplinary reader in philoCAHMICHAI I-, sopl~y,t i i l ~ i i i . ~ / i c ~tiircl v , p.v.i,c.liolcJ,~J.i.. C'iitiil~i.iclgc: Cambritlgc University Press, 1971. GARDNER, D. S. The perception and memory of witnesses. Cornell Law Quarterly, 1933, 8, 391-409. MARSHALL, J. Law and psychology in conflict. New York: Anchor Books, 1969. ORNSTEIN, R. E. On the experience of time. Harmondsworth. Middlesex. England: Penguin, 1969. WHIPPLE, G. M. The observer as reporter: A survey of the psychology of testimony. Psychological Bulletin, 1909, 6 , 153-170. Supreme Court Reporter, 1973, 3 : Rules of Evidence for United State Courts and Magistrates. (Received April 17, 1974) Research Proposal Worksheet 1. Choose an experiment from one of the three articles we read together to replicate. A. Indicate which article the experiment is from by writing the last names of the authors and year of publication Example: Vohs, Redden, & Rahinel (2013) B. Indicate the research question from study that you will be replicating. Be sure to label the IV and DV as shown in the example below. Example: Does environmental orderliness (IV) affect level of creativity (DV)? C. Independent variable (s) 1. Indicate the operational definition of the IV and the levels of IV from the original study on which your proposal will be based. Example: IV: environmental orderliness operationalized as office space orderliness 2 Levels: 1) office space with papers and other office items arranged in organized/orderly fashion 2) office space with papers and other office items arranged in disorganized/messy fashion 2. Indicate selected replication option: Indicate type of replication study you will be proposing (i.e. conceptual or replication plusextension) Example: conceptual replication 3. Describe your replication idea: A. Indicate the operational definition of the IV (s) and the levels of IV (s) for the study that your group is proposing Example of a conceptual replication: IV: environmental orderliness operationalized as pantry space orderliness 2 Levels: 1) pantry with food and cooking supplies (bowls, pans, spatulas, etc.) arranged in organized/orderly fashion 2) pantry with food and cooking supplies (bowls, pans, spatulas, etc.) arranged in disorganized/disorderly fashion Example of replication-plus-extension proposal: IV1: environmental orderliness operationalized as pantry space orderliness 2 Levels: 1) pantry with food and cooking supplies (bowls, pans, spatulas, etc.) arranged in organized/orderly fashion 2) pantry with food and cooking supplies (bowls, pans, spatulas, etc.) arranged in disorganized/disorderly fashion IV2: time allowed to prepare dish Levels: 1)1 1)2 hour to prepare dish hours to prepare dish B. Dependent variable 1. Indicate the DV of the original study at conceptual and operational levels Example: Conceptual: creativity Operational definition: number and creativity level of ideas participants come up with for alternative uses of a ping pong ball. 2. Indicate how the DV would be operationalized in your proposed study: Example: Creativity will be operationally defined as creativity level of dish prepared by participant. C. State your hypothesis (prediction) using your operational definitions of your IV(s) and DV. Example if you are doing a conceptual replication only: I hypothesize that those who work in the disorderly pantry will come up with more creative dishes than those who work in the orderly pantry. If you are doing a replication plus extension, be sure to indicate your anticipated results for: - main effect of each IV interaction between two IVs Example for a factorial design with 2 IVs: Hypothesis for IV1: I predict a main effect for environmental orderliness. Overall, I predict that those who work in the disorderly pantry will come up with more creative dishes than those who work in the orderly pantry. Hypothesis for IV2: Time – I predict a main effect for time. Overall, I predict that those who had 2 hours to prepare their dish will come up with more creative dishes than those who had 1 hour. Hypothesis for IV1 X IV2: - I predict an interaction between environmental orderliness and time. I predict that the effect of environmental orderliness on creativity will depend on time. Specifically, I predict that disordered pantry will lead to increased creativity in dishes especially for those who had 2 hours to prepare the dish. D. Indicate the design of the study (Please use the same structure and wording as provided in the examples below with your specific IV(s) and DV plugged in. Example of study using only 1 IV: We will be using a between-groups design with environmental orderliness (messy pantry or organized pantry) as the independent variable and level of creativity in dish prepared as the dependent variable. Example of factorial design with 2 IVs: We will be using a 2 (pantry orderliness: organized or disorganized) x 2 (time: 1 hour or 2 hours) between-groups factorial design with score o... Purchase answer to see full attachment