Studies that Support Reliability of Memory

Studies that prove memory is reconstructive (not reliable)

Brewer & Treyens and Bartlett also can be used here because they show that
memories are reconstructive and can be distorted and different based on each
person.
Neisser and Harsch:
- Aim: see if flashbulb memories are subject to distortion
- Procedure: 24 hours after the Challenger disaster, in which a space shuttle
exploded in space, participants were given a questionnaire that askes them
where, when, how, with who did they learn of the incident and more. Two
and a half years later they were given the same questionnaire and were
asked if they had done it before and how certain were they of their
answers.
- Results: the extent of discrepancy was huge, the average accuracy score
was 2.95/7 and half of the participants scored 2 and below. Only 3 students
cored 7/7 however, most of them were very confident.
- Link to FBM: this shows that most of the participants did not develop
“photographic” flashbulb memories maybe because their emotions were
not strongly connected to this incident.
- Strengths: case study was longitudinal and prospective, high ecological
validity, method triangulation, naturalistic, transferability (can be done on
other events such as 9/11)
- Limitations: cannot be replicated, participant attrition (that is, participants
who dropped out of the study over time), demand characteristics (maybe
by changing their confidence rating to please the researchers)

Loftus & Palmer:

 - Aim: to see if leading questions would affect the estimation of speed of two
cars.
- Procedure: the experiment was independent measures design where
participants were divided into 5 groups who all saw the same videos of 2
cars crashing. Then the participants were asked a questionnaire where one
of the questions was “how fast were the cars going when they hit each
other?”. the critical word “hit” was replaced with “bumped”, “collided”,
“contacted”, and “smashed” for the 4 other groups.
- Results: the “smashed” group had the highest average estimated speed
while the “contacted” group had the lowest average estimated speed. The
averages indicate that the critical word affected the participants’ estimates,
and a subjective question can distort people’s memories because memory
is reconstructive.
- Strengths: variables were controlled so high internal validity,
- Limitations: low ecological validity, sampling bias because only students
were used, people have hard times estimating the speed of cars, especially
inexperienced students.

Studies that prove memory is not reconstructive (reliable)

Yuille and Cutshall: (field experiment of case study)
- Aim: determine whether leading questions would affect memory of
eyewitnesses at a real crime scene
- Procedure: A thief entered a gun shop in Vancouver and tied up the owner,
he then escaped and was shot by the thief. This crime scene was chosen
because there were enough witnesses, forensic evidence, and police
reports of what the witnesses originally saw at the scene.. A couple of
months later, the first group of witnesses were asked if they saw “a”
broken headlight at the crime scene, while the other group were asked if
they saw “the” broken headlight. In fact there was no broken headlight.
- Results: the eyewitnesses were very reliable, since most remembered a lot
of accurate details and reported there was no broken headlight. So the
leading questions did not affect the memory of the eyewitnesses
- Link: contradicts Loftus and Palmer where leading questions effect recall of
memories, maybe here their emotions played a role in memory. This shows
memory is reliable and not reconstructive.
- Strengths: prospective since the researchers had the original police reports
of what the witnesses reported seeing, consent was taken, naturalistic
- Limitations: not replicable, not generalizable, no control of variables,
researcher bias