factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony - anxiety

Question 1

what is weapon focus?

Answer 1

when witnesses focus on what someone is holding rather than anything else, more cognitive attention is selectively drawn to the weapon due to the threat that it may pose - example of tunnel vision.

Question 2

johnson and scott study on weapon focus

Answer 2

procedure - participants believed they were taking part in a lab study. participants in the low-anxiety condition overheard a casual conversation in the next room, then saw a man walk past holding a pen with grease on his hands. other participants in the high-anxiety condition overheard a heated argument and the sound of breaking glass, then saw a man walk out with blood on his hands and holding a knife.

findings - participants later picked out the man from a set of 50 photos, 49% of people who had seen the man carrying the pen could identify him. 33% of people who saw the man carrying the knife could identify him. the tunnel theory of memory argues that people have enchanced memory for central events. weapon focus as a result of anxiety has this effect.

Question 3

yuille and cutshall study on fight or flight response

Answer 3

procedure - studied an actual shooting in a gun shop. 13 of the 21 witnesses took part in the study and were interviewed 4-5 months after the shooting, these were compared with the police interviews at the time. accuracy was determined by the number of details reported. participants were also asked to rate how stressed they felt at the time of the incident and whether they had experienced any emotional problems since.

findings - very accurate in their accounts, little change in their answers. participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate, 88% compared to 75%. suggests that anxiety doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the accuracy of EWT and may even enhance it.

conclusion - real life eye witnesses may actually remember a lot, high anxiety focused the attention of the witnesses so they took in more information. perhaps because the situation posed a real threat and so witnesses were paying more attention.

IV - high vs low anxiety
DV - accuracy of recall
type - quasi

Question 4

evaluation point - unusualness not anxiety

Answer 4

• limitation of johnson and scott’s study is that it may not have tested anxiety
• participants may have focused on the weapon due to being surprised rather than scared
• kerri pickel conducted a study using scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as the hand held items in a video - EWT accuracy during a questionnaire (including identifying the correct person) was poorer in the more unusual conditions.
• lowest results were for chicken and handgun (tunnel vision)
• weapon focus effect is actually due to unusualness rather than anxiety or threat, therefore tells us nothing about the effect of anxiety on EWT.

Question 5

problems with how researchers test anxiety and weapon focus

Answer 5

• usually have to set up artificial settings where participants are exposed to a crime
• have to rely on the fact that participants will hopefully feel some anxiety
• low mundane realism, potential for demand characteristics if scenarios aren’t realistic enough
• limits what can actually be tested
• sometimes can take advantage of a real crime but there is then often a loss of control and isn’t as easy to manage

Question 6

yerkes and dodson’s law - inverted u

Answer 6

• relationship between emotional arousal and performance looks like an inverted u on a graph

Question 7

reasons for inconsistent findings

Answer 7

• individual differences in stress response to anxiety - therefore may have a different effect on different individuals’ memories
• methodological issues - situation may not provoke genuine anxiety, perhaps participants guess the aim and could display demand characteristics