Anxiety

• Anxiety 


  Can make memory better or worse
• Yerkes and Dodson law (1908)

  A) Increasing attention and interest

  B) Optimal arousal and performance

  C) Impared performance due to high anxiety

  
• Evaluation- Strength

  Support for negative effects- Valentine and Mescout (2009)

  • Anxiety disrupted the participants ability to recall details about the actor in London dungeons
• Evaluation- Strength

  Support for positive effects- Christian and Hubinette (1993)

  • Interviewed 58 witnesses to a bank robbery in Sweden
  • Direct victims was the most accurate- 75%
• Evaluation- Limitation

  Could be

  • Unusualness not anxiety
  • Johnson and Scott may not have tested for anxiety
• EValuation- Limitation

  Pickel (1998)

  Conducted an experiment using scissors, a wallet or raw chicken

  Eyewitness accuracy was poorer in the more unusual conditions