Anxiety

• Yuille & Cutshall (1986) contradicts the importance of weapon focus in influencing eyewitness memory.
• Parker et al (2006) claims that lab experiments only test high or low anxiety, not moderate.
• Pickel (1998) suggest that unusualness of an object can influence memory more than anxiety.
• Valentine & Mesout (2009) support the negative effects of anxiety on memory in their study in the London Dungeons.
• Many real-life cases cannot be replicated, so tend to have low reliability.
• Laboratory experiments may have low external validity (ecological).
• Real levels of anxiety cannot be created in a lab, this reduces the validity of the findings.
• Halford & Milne (2005) found victims of violent crimes were more accurate in their recall of crime scene information than victims of non-violent crimes.
• There is no 'one size fits all' rule about the effects of anxiety on accuracy of EWT, everyone is different.
• Individual differences play a large part in the effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony.
• Bothwell et al (1987) found that “stable” participants showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased. In contrast, the accuracy for “neurotic” participants decreased as stress increased.