EWT : anxiety Flashcards
effects of anxiety
anxiety has negative effect on accuracy
stress/anxiety has negative effect on memory as well as performance.
johnson and scott study
participant sit in waiting room where they heard argument in adjoining room, saw a man run through room carry either pen in grease (low anxiety condition) or knife covered blood (high anxiety ‘weapon focus’ condition)
then had to identify man from set of photos
FINDINGS
mean accuracy man in pen was 49%
but knife condition is 33%
LOTFUS showed anxiety does focus attention on central features of crime eg the weapon. attention drawn physically down towards weapon than other things such as face
anxiety has a positive affect on accuracy
can create accurate memories .evolutionary argument suggest it would be adaptive to remember events that are emotionally important so you can identify similar situation in future and recall how to respond eg what you did last time to escape lion
what did christianson and hubinutte find - anxiety had positive effect on accuracy
found enhanced recall when questioned 58 real witnesses to bank robbery in sweden. interview don’t after 4-15 months of robbery.
75% accurate recall, the victims who were most anxious had best recall
resolving the contraction
DEFFENBACHER reviewed 21 studies of anxiety affect on EWT, found 10 studies had results that linked higher levels to increased accuracy, but 11 showed low anxiety linked to higher recall
medium recall
best for recall, too extreme or too low levels reduces accuracy
strength
real life versus lab studies
CHRISTASON AND HABINETTE was study of anxiety in real crime,
limitation
weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety- PICKLE said it can be due to surprise rather than anxiety
had theif enter hairdresser salon carrying scissors (high threat low surpise) handgun (high threat high surprise) raw chicken (low threat high surprise)
identification was least accurate in thr high surpise rather than high threat
