Variations in Severity of Verbs and Eyewitnesses' Testimony: An Alternative Interpretation

96 subjects viewed three different videotaped sequences and then received testimony questions which manipulated the rated severity of verbs used to describe each event. The effects of such questioning on the recall of the events were evaluated after both short- and long-retention intervals. In contrast to the Loftus and Palmer hypothesis no effects of severity of verbs on the subjects' thematic interpretations of the event were obtained. Previously reported effects of severity of verbs on subjects' recall of an event were interpreted as representing changes at the verbal-associational or semantic level rather than at the conceptual or thematic level within memory.