Anxiety

• Anxiety has a negative effect on recall
• Anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents us from paying attention to important cues
• Tunnel Vision

  Attention is crucial in memory - therefore factors that affect the way we direct our attention might affect memory
• Tunnel Theory of Memory (Safer et al 1998)

  During a stressful event, automatically narrow attention to the details that are the source of arousal

  Narrowed attention, combined with heightened processing of the critical details, result in poorer memory of ‘peripheral’ details

  EG, weapon focus effect - if a victim has a gun held to them, they are more likely to focus on the gun than the person
• Weapon Focus Effect - Johnson and Scott (1967)

  Deceived participants into thinking they were taking part in a lab test

  While in the waiting room, they heard an argument in the next room

  ‘Low anxiety’ condition - a man walked out with a pen and grease on his hand

  ‘High anxiety’ condition - a man walked out with a knife and blood on it
• Weapon focus effect - Johnson and Scott (1967)

  The participants had to pick out the man from 50 people

  ‘low anxiety’ participants picked the right man 49% of the time

  ‘high anxiety’ participants were able to pick the right man 33% of the time

  The tunnel theory of memory argues that the witness’ attention narrows onto the weapon, not the mans face
• Weapon focus effect - Johnson and Scott (1967)

  Disadvantages

  • Lab study - artificial and lacks mundane realism
  • Not directed at the participants so maybe not paying attention
  • psychological harm and deception
  • May lack internal validity as its more surprising than anxious
• Valentine and Mesout (2009) - London dungeons

  Participants were put into London dungeon

  Offered a reduced entrance fee if they agreed to complete questionnaires at the end to asses their self reported anxiety

  Wore wireless hear monitors to confirm they were anxious

  Divided into high and low anxiety groups
• Valentines and Mesout (2009) - London dungeons

  We’re tasked to describe a person encountered in the dungeon

  The high-anxiety group recalled the fewest correct details

  Those in low anxiety group mostly correctly identified them
• Weapon focus effect - Pickel (1998)

  Someone with scissors, a handgun, a wallet, or raw chicken walks into a hairdressers

  Eyewitness found it harder to remember holding a handgun or a chicken as they were more surprising and unusual
• Anxiety has a positive effect on recall - Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

  A study on a real shooting in a Canadian gun shop - owner shot a thief

  21 witnesses - 13 agreed to take part in the study

  Interviews were held 4-5 moths after incident and then compared with original police interviews made at the time of the shooting

  They were asked how stressed they were at the event and if they had any psychological problems afterwards
• Anxiety has a positive effect on recall - Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

  The witnesses were very accurate in their accounts and their was little change in the accuracy over 5 months

  those with the highest reported levels of stress were the most accurate
• Inverted U - Yerkes and Dodson (1908)

  The relationship between emotional arousal and performance is an ‘inverted U’
• Inverted U - Deffenbacher (1983)

  Applied the inverted U to EWT

  lower levels of anxiety produce lower levels of recall accurately, but memory becomes more accurate as the level of anxiety increases

  However the optimum level of anxiety can be reached and the eyewitnesses accuracy can decrease gently
• Inverted U theory is too simplistic

  Anxiety is very complex and hard to measure due to having so mane elements (Cognitive, behaviour, emotional, and physical)

  However the inverted U only assumes one is linked to performance
• Inverted U

  At high cognitive anxiety there is a catastrophic drop off in performance (Bothwell et al 1987)

  so cognitive anxiety, may be inversely related to self confidence, mediated the impact of arousal/stress on performance

  This means that the catastrophe model is a more appropriate explanation of the role of anxiety in EWT accuracy