Leading questions—questions worded in such a way as to suggest a particular answer—can yield unreliable testimony either by design, as when a lawyer tries to trick a witness into affirming a particular version of the evidence of a case, or by accident, when a questioner unintentionally prejudices the witness’s response. For this or unintentionally by lawyers, police investigators, reporters, or others with whom the witness has already interacted.
Recent studies have confirmed the ability of leading questions to alter the details of our memories and have led to a better understanding of how this process occurs and, perhaps, of the conditions that make for greater risks that an eyewitness’s memories have been tainted by leading questions. These studies suggest that processed as belonging to the original memory even if the witness actually saw no stop sign.
The farther removed from the event, the greater the chance of a vague or incomplete recollection and the greater the likelihood of newly suggested information blending with original memories. Since we can be more easily misled with respect to fainter and more uncertain memories, tangential details are more apt to become constructed armed robbery, but later those factors might be crucial to establishing the identity of the perpetrator.
What this question is testing
Your task
Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.
Common trap
Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.
Winning move
Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.
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