Experiment+5

= Learning Theories-Team 7 =

=﻿Article: Semantic Integration of Verbal Information into a Visual Memory= Elizabeth F. Loftus, David G. Miller, Helen J. Burns

Experiment Five
Are these results just limited to this study? Would we get similar results if we changed the scenario?

Method
80 students viewed 20 NEW slides covering a totally different scenario.
 * Slides**

Four of these slides contained critical variations.

The slides were almost identical except for very small changes.
 * One variation was a shovel leaning against a tree versus skis leaning against a tree.
 * So about half saw a version with a shovel and the other half saw a version with ski's.

The entire group completed a 10 min filler activity.

Instead of a questionnaire the participants were told to read a short summary written by another person who had viewed the slides at length. The summary did not necessarily correspond to what they had seen in their slides.
 * Summary**

Some students received a copy that used a misleading phrase, and others did not make a mention of something in one of the critical slides.

So for example if a student saw an image with ski's they might have read something that said: //"the shovel leaning up against the tree."//

The summary included all 4 slide variations.

Finally the group were shown the series of slides side by side.

The group was shown the critical slides side by side and the group had to determine which one they saw.

Results
Similar results from the previous studies. When the misleading text was read in the summary, the students performed significantly worse than those that receiving no misleading information.

The study allows one to generalize the results beyond just the stop/yield stimulus pairs.

Our Conclusions >