EWT: Anxiety

Question 1

Why does anxiety have a negative effect on recall?

Answer 1

Anxiety creates a physiological arousal which prevents us from paying attention to important cues.

Question 2

Explain the 2 conditions of Johnson and Scott’s study - High and low anxiety

Answer 2

Low anxiety: witnessed man with pen and greasy hands.
High anxiety: witnessed man with knife and bloody hands.

Question 3

Explain the results of Johnson and Scott’s study

Answer 3

Low anxiety - 49% could correctly identify the man from a line up.
High anxiety - 33% correctly identified the man.

Question 4

What is ‘tunnel theory’?

Answer 4

When anxiety causes focus on central details

Question 5

Why could anxiety have a positive effect on recall?

Answer 5

It creates a physiological arousal that triggers fight or flight and increases alertness.

Question 6

Explain the procedure of Yuille and Cutshall’s study - Shooting

Answer 6

• 13 witnesses to the shooting in Vancouver.
• Participants interviewed 4-5 months after shooting.
• Details compared with original interviews.
• Also asked to report stress and emotional problems since.

Question 7

What were the results of Yuille and Cutshall’s study?

Answer 7

• Little change in accuracy over time.
• Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate: 88% compared to 75% for less stressed.

Question 8

What is Yerkes-Dodson law?

Answer 8

Inverted U theory

Question 9

Explain Deffenbacher’s review of 21 studies

Answer 9

• Found contradictory effects of anxiety.
• Recall accuracy increases as anxiety does, up to an optimum level.
• Any more anxiety causes a decline.

Question 10

What is a limitation of Johnson and Scott’s study? - Weapons are unusual

Answer 10

• They were measuring effect, rather than anxiety.
• Recall was poorer in the unusual situations.
• They don’t tell us anything specific about EWT.

Question 11

What is a strength of anxiety on EWT? - More support (Christianson and Hubinette)

Answer 11

• Interviewed witnesses to ban robberies in Sweden.
• Researchers assumed those directly involved had higher anxiety.
• Recall was 75% across all witnesses and direct witnesses were even higher.
• Findings from real crimes support the idea anxiety has a positive effect on recall.

Question 12

What is a limitation of Inverted-U theory?

Answer 12

• Only accounts for physical factors.
• Other aspects of anxiety may be important. e.g = how we think about stressful events.
• May be too simplistic to explain the effects of anxiety on performance.