Role of Attention Flashcards
Emotional aspects of a crime scene
Easterbrook (1959): attentional resources are allocated to the emotional aspects and this does not leave many for nonemotional aspects of a situation.
Emotional slideshow of woman on bike / falling off / carrying - then asked to identify woman’s coat (central) and colour of the car in the distant background? Eye movements recorded.
Christianson et al (1991): [baby matt as the messiah picking her up] found that in the emotional condition compared to the control condition the same amount of participants answered both questions correctly, more answered the central question correctly and less answered the peripheral correctly.
Eye movements found increased/decreased focus on the central/peripheral details respectively - showing that the modulation of attention is a plausible explanation to why central detail information is better retained.
Weapon Focus Effect
➢ Loftus et al (1987) - 2 sets of slides in fast food shop. 1st - customer points a gun at cashier, 2nd - customer hands a cheque to cashier. PPs fixated more times on the gun and for a longer duration. Those watching slides with the weapon in, performed significantly worse in memory questions pertaining to the target individual - so attention does have an effect of some sort
Divided attention studies - evidence that attention is not necessarily required for the emotional enhancement of memory - leading to theory of 2 emotional memory mechanisms - 1.) Direct effect of emotion on memory (indep. of attention and 2.) e
➢ Attention allocated to a primary task is depleted by the need to complete a concurrent secondary task. It is thought that DA paradigms impair attentional processes while leaving automatic ‘pre-attentive’ processes unaffected (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004).
➢ Pottage & Schaefer (2012) - negative emotion modulates memory through an automatic route - no attention is required
Regression analysis - found the 2 different effects (dep. and indep of attention)
