Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction¶
Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585-589.
Cited by¶
6 citations across 6 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Elicitation Channel Contribution
- Legal deposition: the question protocol shapes recorded testimony; deposition preparation is literally channel-design awareness.
This sourceDemonstrates that the form of a question (the verb used) systematically shapes recorded testimony about a witnessed event — the channel writing its own signature into legally-consequential records, the basis for deposition-question / channel-design awareness.
- Legal deposition: the question protocol shapes recorded testimony; deposition preparation is literally channel-design awareness.
Domain-specific¶
Mechanisms¶
- Cognitive Interview
- Retrospective recall is reconstructive — the expert can, in perfect good faith, supply a cleaner rationale than they actually held at the time, and a suggestive interviewer can seed detail that the practitioner then "remembers."
This sourceShows that suggestive post-event wording can reconstruct memory and elicit recall of details that were never present.
- Retrospective recall is reconstructive — the expert can, in perfect good faith, supply a cleaner rationale than they actually held at the time, and a suggestive interviewer can seed detail that the practitioner then "remembers."
- Context Reconstruction Interview
- Its failure mode is that memory is reconstructive, and interviews can build the tidy story they were meant to discover — leading questions and post-event framing can reshape what a witness reports, the misinformation effect
This sourceExperimentally shows that post-event question wording can reconstruct memory and alter witness reports.
- Its failure mode is that memory is reconstructive, and interviews can build the tidy story they were meant to discover — leading questions and post-event framing can reshape what a witness reports, the misinformation effect
- Guided Narrative Reframing
- Its failure mode is the darkest in this whole archetype: because a story is maximally malleable while it is being retold, a suggested detail introduced during that window can be absorbed as genuine memory — the misinformation effect, where post-event information rewrites the recollection of the event itself.
This sourceShows that suggested post-event wording can be incorporated into later recollection of the witnessed event.
- Its failure mode is the darkest in this whole archetype: because a story is maximally malleable while it is being retold, a suggested detail introduced during that window can be absorbed as genuine memory — the misinformation effect, where post-event information rewrites the recollection of the event itself.
- Witness / Source Comparison
- Its central failure mode is the fragility of memory itself: confident testimony can be sincerely, elaborately wrong, because post-event information reshapes recollection — the misinformation effect documented in eyewitness research.
This sourceDemonstrates that post-event question wording can alter eyewitness estimates and later recollection.
- Its central failure mode is the fragility of memory itself: confident testimony can be sincerely, elaborately wrong, because post-event information reshapes recollection — the misinformation effect documented in eyewitness research.
Verification¶
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
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