Participant Information Sheet

The Relationship Between Language and Memory: A Re-examination of Loftus and Palmer (1974)

You are being invited to take part in a research study. Before you decide to take part, it is important for you to understand that your participation in this study is completely voluntary, and it is your choice whether or not to take part. Before making that choice, it is important to understand what the research will involve, and this consent form will provide that information: it will tell you about the study, why it is being done, what will be done during the study, as well as all of the potential discomforts and benefits that can come from participation. If you decide to participate, please take the time to read the information contained in this information sheet after which you will be asked to sign this form.

What is the purpose of the study?

This study aims to investigate memory formation and encoding of an event and if the language used in enquiring about said event has an impact on the formation and recollection of memories.

Do I have to take part?

Participation in this study is entirely optional and you are under no obligation to take part. If you do choose to participate you will be asked to consent to the collection and analysis of your data.

Will my taking part in this study be kept confidential?

During the study we will not collect any personally identifying information beyond your age and gender identifier; the study is also conducted on GDPR compliant software, and therefore should be completely confidential. Due to this level of confidentiality, there is no way of identifying your specific responses after they have been submitted, making it impossible to remove your responses after this point. Therefore, if you wish to withdraw from the study, you must discontinue before you submit your responses.

What is involved if I take part?

The study should take approximately 20 minutes to complete. You will see 7 different videos of car accidents involving 2 or more vehicles. After viewing each video, you will be asked to provide a small summary of what you remember happened during the incident, before answering 10 questions asking you to recall or estimate details about each one. IMPORTANT – The videos involve real car accidents, and although none of the individuals in the videos sustained any serious injury, the images may still be upsetting to some participants. If you believe such images would be upsetting, you are free to withdraw your participation.

What will happen to the results of the research study?

This research has been granted ethical approval from the College of Science and Engineering at The University of Glasgow. The data obtained for this study will be gathered in accordance with GDPR compliant software and stored on a secure server. It is possible any data without personal identifying information may be made publicly available online for reanalysis and replication from other researchers; data may thus be kept indefinitely. The anonymous results from this survey will be used for a Masters dissertation and may be used for presentations both internal and external to the university, published as articles, or presented on other popular media. All data collected within this study will be kept confidential on a secure and password protected computer.

Who can I contact if I want more information?

If you would like more information on this study, would like a summary of results after the experiment has been completed and analysed, or if you have any questions not covered in this information sheet, please feel free to contact John McCutcheon (2602875M@student.gla.ac.uk), the student conducting this experiment, or Dr Guillaume Rousselet (Guillaume.Rousselet@glasgow.ac.uk), the supervisor for this project.

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