Memory: Anxiety

Question 1

Why would anxiety have a negative effect on recall

Answer 1

• anxiety creates a physiological arousal in the body - prevents us from paying attention to important cues
• so recall is worse

Question 2

What evidence suggests anxiety has a negative effect on recall

Answer 2

• Johnson and Scott - ppts believed they were going to take part in a lab study
• while seated in a waiting room, ppts heard arguing in the opposite room
  -low anxiety condition - man walked through waiting room with a pen and grease on his hands
• high anxiety condition - ppts saw a man walk out holding a paper knife and covered in blood
• asked to pick man from 50 photos - 33% of ppts in high anxiety condition able to recall him, compared to 49%

Question 3

What is the ‘tunnel theory of memory’

Answer 3

• a witnesses attention narrows to focus on a weapon, because it is a source of anxiety

Question 4

Why would anxiety have a positive effect on recall

Answer 4

• the stress of witnessing a crime creates anxiety through physiological arousal
• fight or flight response is triggered which increases our alertness and improves our memory for the event

Question 5

What research evidence suggests anxiety has a positive effect on recall

Answer 5

• yuille and cutshall - conducted a study of a real life shooting in Canada
• 13/21 witnesses agreed to take part in the study,interviews held 4-5 months after the incident and were compared to original police interviews
• witnesses asked to rate how stressed they were at the time of the incident on a 7 point scale
• there was little change in the accuracy of reportings, those who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (88% compared to 75%)

Question 6

What was the ‘yerkes and Dodson law’

Answer 6

• the relationship between emotional arousal and performance looks like an ‘inverted U’
• it can be applied to EWT - lower levels fo anxiety produce lower levels of recall accuracy but memory becomes more accurate as the level of anxiety experienced increases, only up to a point.

Question 7

What are the 3 evaluation points for the effect of anxiety of EWT

Answer 7

• weapon focus effect may not be relevant
• field studies sometimes lack control
• there are ethical issues

Question 8

Outline ‘weapon focus effect may not be relevant’ as an evaluation point for the effect of anxiety on EWT

Answer 8

• Johnson and Scott’s study on the weapon focus effect may test surprise and not anxiety
• pickel - conducted an experiment using scissors, a handgun, a wallet and a raw chicken as handheld items in a hair salon
• eye witness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (raw chicken)

Question 9

Outline ‘field studies sometimes lack control’ as an evaluation point for the effect of anxiety on EWT

Answer 9

• researches usually interview real life eyewitnesses
• all sorts of things can happen to the ppts in the meantime, that the researcher has no control over
• E.g. discussions with others, accounts in the media etc
• it is possible, these extraneous variables are responsible for the accuracy of EWT

Question 10

Outline ‘ethical issues’ as an evaluation point for the effect of anxiety on EWT

Answer 10

• creating anxiety in ppts is risky and unethical
• it may subject ppts to psychological harm
• however, some psychologists interview people who have already witnessed a Real life event