A03 A Factors affecting EWT

• Weapon focus may not be relevant

  Experiment may test surprise than anxiety. Ppts focus on the weapon maybe because they were surprised at what they saw
• Pickel

  Conducted an exp using scissors, handgun, wallet or raw chicken. Held items in hairdressing salon. Eyewitness accuracy was poorer in high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun)
• Weapon focus effect and usualness

  Suggests weapon focus effect is due to usualness rather than anxiety and thus, tells us nothing much about the effects of anxiety on EWT
• Field studies sometimes lack control

  Researchers usually interview real-life eyewitnesses some time after event. Lots of things happen in between this period where researcher has no control- discussions with other people. These extraneous variables may reduce accuracy of recall and effects of anxiety may be overwhelmed
• There are ethical issues


  Creating anxiety in ppts is risky because it may subject ppts to psychological harm purely for purpose of research. This is why real-life studies are beneficial -interviewing people who already experienced event
• Inverted U explanation is too simplistic


  Anxiety is very difficult to define and measure accurately. One reason is that it has many elements cognitive,behavioural,emotional and physical. Inverted U explanation only covers one of these is linked to poor performance- physiological arousal
• Demand characteristics operate in lab studies of anxiety

  Most lab studies show ppts a filme crime. Most of these ppts will be aware they are watching a filmed crime for a reason to do with the study. Chances are most ppts would have figured out they will be asked questions about what they have seen