factors affecting EWT weapon focus Flashcards
what is the main explanation for the effect of a weapon on recall?
attention is being paid to the weapon
why does the fact that weapons are unusual in certain cultures affect attention?
more attention is focused on the weapon rather than peripheral information
what does it diminish the capacity of?
to encode other information
what did taylor claim?
when a witness concentrates on a weapon in a scene it leaves no attention available for seeing other things
how is optimum arousal linked to weapon focus?
when there is a weapon present optimum arousal is created, so it assists recall in information about the weapon but not about surroundings
what did lotus suggest about weapon focus?
that a weapon focuses attention away from the less dramatic visual images such as the image of perpetrator
what did mass and kohnken find? (S)
students who were approached by a women holding a syringe or a pen, she could have said she was going to gove an injection
found that when asked to identify the women in a line up ppts in the pen condition performed better
greater fear of injections the worst they did
what year was loftus’s study for weapon focus?
1987
what did loftus 1987 find? (S)
shows ppts a series of slides of a customer in a restaurant either holding a chequebook or a gun
ppts who saw gun were less likely to identify
him in an id parade (15%) than the chequebook (35%) gun condition also spent more time with eyes fixated on the weapon
what did pickel find 1998? (W)
ppts shown a video consisting of a scene from a hair salon man walked in to hand receptionist money, in one version holding a gun, scissors, wallet, raw chicken
found raw chicken and gun resulted in west recall, showing that it may not be weapon but unusual
scissors had no effect
what did fawcett find?
did a meta analysis to try and identify what causes our memories to be influenced when a weapon is present
they found that weapon presence consistently demonstrated negative effect of feature accuracy and identification
