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Impact of gestures on the misinformation effect over the short and long term
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Impact of gestures on the misinformation effect over the short and long term

Kristen Paige D'Angelo
University of West Florida,
Master of Arts (MA), University of West Florida
2018

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Abstract

The misinformation effect occurs when inaccurate post-event information affects a person's memory of the original event. Studies of the misinformation effect typically focus on verbal information, but gestures may be even more misleading. The purpose of the current research was to compare the potential of gestural and verbal information to mislead witnesses. We also addressed the limited research on gestural misinformation by having a longer delay before questioning than is typically used. In Experiment 1, participants watched a video of a robbery, then answered a set of video recorded open-ended questions that contained misleading gestural information. The three questions that led to the highest rates of misinformed responses were used in Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, participants viewed the same crime, then received video recorded questions in one of three conditions: gestural misinformation, verbal misinformation, or no misinformation (control). Additionally, we varied the delay before recall with either a short (5 minutes) or a long (2 days) delay. We found verbal misinformation led to the highest rate of misinformed responses, and gestural misinformation was not significantly different from the control. The long delay led to significantly more unrelated errors, but not more misled errors.
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