anxiety

• what is anxiety

  a state of emotional and physical arousal
• impact of anxiety on recall

  the physical state of arousal prevents us paying attention to important cues

  decreases recall
• one way that the impact of anxiety was measured

  weapon focus
• impact of a weapon on anxiety

  the presence of a weapon creates anxiety

  leads to a focus son the weapon, reducing a witnesses recall for other details of the event
• who research weapon focus

  Johnson and Scott 1976
• Johnson and Scott procedure

  participants believed they were taking part in a lab study

  created a low anxiety condition

  created a high anxiety condition
• low anxiety condition

  participant sat in waiting room

  pp overhead a causal conversation in the next room

  then saw a man walk past carrying a pencil and had greasy hands
• high anxiety condition

  pp sat in waiting room

  they overhead a heated argument and the sound of breaking glass

  a man walked out the room with a knife covered in blood
• findings of Johnson and Scott

  participants later picked out the man from a set of 50 photos

  low anxiety condition= 49% correct identification

  high anxiety condition= 33% correct identification
• conclusion of Johnson and Scott

  tunnel theory

  argues people have enhanced memory for central events

  weapon focus as a result of anxiety can have this result
• can anxiety have a positive effect on recall

  witnessing a stressful event creates anxiety and the fight or flight response is triggered

  increases alertness

  may improve memory
• who researched anxiety as a positive effect

  Yuille and Cutshall 1986
• limitation of Johnson and Scott

  weapon focus due to unusualness not anxiety (Pickle)

  anxiety varies person to person
• Pickle's procedure on weapon focus

  conducted experiment using different objects in a hair salon

  used 4 conditions
• 4 conditions of Pickle

  scissors- high anxiety, low unusualness

  chicken- low anxiety, anxiety,high unusualness

  handgun- high anxiety, high unusualness

  wallet- low anxiety, low unusualness
• findings of Pickle

  eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in high unusualness conditions
• conclusions of Pickle

  suggest weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat
• Yuille and Cutshall procedure

  studied a shooting in a shop in Vancouver, Canada

  the shop owner was shot dead

  13 of the 21 witnesses took part

  interviews pps five months after incident

  interviews compared with original police reports

  pps asked to rate their stress at the time of incident and if they had emotional problems since
• findings of Yuille and Cutshall

  the witnesses were very accuracy, with little change in recall since the accident

  highest levels of stress= 88% accuracy

  lowest levels of stress= 75% accuracy
• conclusion of Yuille and Cutshall

  anxiety does not have a detrimental effect on the accuracy of eyewitness memory in a real-world context

  may even increase EWT
• who explain the reason for contradictory findings

  Yerkes and Dodson 1908
• Yerkes and Dodson graph

  they explained that the relationship between emotional arousal and performances looks like and 'inverted U'

  
• Deffenbacher 1983 procedure

  21 studies of EWT

  noted contradictory findings on the effects of anxiety

  used the Yerkes-dodson law to explain the findings
• findings of Deffenbacher

  when we witness a crime we become emotionally and physiologically aroused

  lower levels of anxiety= lower levels of recall accuracy

  increased anxiety/arousal= memory becomes more accurate

  after optimal anxiety/ accuracy is reached they suffer a drastic decline
• limitation of Deffenbacher

  ignores different factors of anxiety

  over simplistic
• strengths of deffenbacher

  provides framework for understanding how anxiety affects EWT accuracy

  used meta-analysis

  practical application
• strengths Yuille and Cutshall

  high ecological validity

  can be used to critique Loftus and Palmer
• limitations of Yuille and Cutshall

  low reliability

  ungeneralisable