Eyewitness testimony - weapon focus Flashcards
weapon focus
concentration of a crime witness’s attention on a weapon, and the resultant reduction in ability to remember other details of the crime
how can stress influence recall
(Ainsworth & King) - witnesses who were very nervous were less likely to pick out a suspect from an ID parade than witnesses that were less nervous
why does weapon focus occur
the unusualness of the situation
the threat of the weapon
attentional narrowing - the witness focusses on what can most hurt them
why are violent incidents less accurately recalled
they draw the focus of the witnesses attention, leaving little processing for other information
they increase anxiety and autonomic arousal, which has a detrimental impact on memory
what happens to recall after arousal has passed a certain point?
once it has passed the optimum, performance tends to decline
this arousal state is due to the presence of the weapon
this is according to the Yerkes-Dodson Law
how does attention cause weapon focus
attention is directed towards the weapon
attentional accounts have shown that ppts spend more time looking at, and therefore attending to the weapon than they do other peripheral details
this causes memories not to be formed or to be weaker where attention does not fall
Pickel (1998) - unusualness and weapon focus
manipulated unusualness and threat but found only unusualness impacted memory
suggests that it may be unusualness rather than threat that causes weapon focus
when a weapon appears in a contextually appropriate scene, the weapon focus effect does not emerge (pickel 1999)
Loftus and Messo - eye movements during a crime scene
eye movements monitored whilst ppts watched a crime scene
when a weapon is present, it became the object of attention more frequently and for longer periods of time than other occurrences at the scene
Yuille and Cutshall - good study for AO3
need to make notes on this study
