Eyewitness testimony and false memory: attempting to reduce false memories for events using the Loftus Paradigm

The purpose of this experiment was to investigate how warning instructions informing participants about the false memory phenomena could reduce the recall of false memories of an event. A total of 60 undergraduate students saw a 40 second video clip depicting an auto-motorcycle accident. Participants received either neutral instructions or warning instructions prior to watching the video clip. Later, participants were exposed to either correct or misleading post-event information and warning instructions correctly recalled more events than those who did not receive a warning. Results suggest that warning instructions given prior to the encoding of an event to participants who received misleading post-event information can help reduce the occurrence of false memories. Further, warnings given to participants who received correct post-event information resulted in an increase in false recall.