The Effects of Anxiety on EWT and The cognitive interview Flashcards
what is anxiety?
A cognitive emotion
when may EWT recall be affected and what does this mean?
during initial coding of information- means emotional state, caused by high anxiety can negatively affect how we store and encode the info- affecting how accurately we can recall the right info
What do laboratory studies in general demonstrate about anxiety?
High anxiety leads to the poorest accuracy- however we don’t tend to find the same results in real life.
When is it believed that eyewitness testimony is the most accurate?
when the anxiety level is somewhere in between low and high (yerkes and dodson curve)
What does the Yerkes-Dodson Cyre suggest?
High Anxiety- Bad recall
Medium Anxiety- Best recall
Low Anxiety- Poor recall
What is a different account of why anxiety may reduce the accuracy of EWT?
The Weapons focus effect
What is the weapons focus effect?
(effect, not factor, anxiety is)
-The view that our weapon in a criminals hands distracts attention (because of the anxiety it creates) from other features and therefore reduces accuracy of identification
What was Johnson and Scott (1976) aim?
To investigate whether high levels of anxiety would affect accuracy of recall
what is the procedure of Johnson and Scott?
-Used 2 experimental methods (one with weapon, one without- participants asked to sit outside the room where they thought they heard a genuine discussion between two people
What was the Low anxiety (no weapon ) condition?
-The conversation was peaceful about some office equipment, when they were finished, a man emerged, holding a pen with grease on his hands
what was the high anxiety (With weapon) condition?
-The conversation was more heated, participants had breaking glass, and a man emerged, holding a knife covered in blood
What was the DV for Johnson and Scott? (1976)
The number of correct identifications made of the man from 50 photographs
What were the findings of Johnson and Scott? (1976)
-In low Anxiety condition, 49% were able to accurately, identify the man holding a pen from the photographs
-In high anxiety (with weapon), memory recall was much less- 33% accuracy
What is Johnson and Scott’s conclusion?
-This suggests the weapon may have distracted attention from the person holding it- this therefore may explain why eye witnesses sometimes have poor recall for certain violent crimes involving weapons where may be heightened
- negatively impacts accuracy of ewt
What is Loftus and Burns (1982) procedure?
-participants watched a film of a simulated robbery
-Someone watched a non-violent version than some watched a violent version (where a boy was shot in the face)
