INCREASES EWT ACCURACY

• WHO DID THE EXPERIMENT THAT SUGGESTS ANXIETY CAN IMPROVE EWT?

  Yuille and Cutshall
• WHAT HAPPENED IN YUILLE AND CUTSHALL'S EXPERIMENT?

  interviewed 13 people who had witnessed a real armed robbery and got them to rate anxiety and answer questions about the event
• WHAT DID YUILLE AND CUTSHALL FIND?

  participants who reported higher anxiety levels were most accurate in detail recall
• EVALUATION OF YUILLE AND CUTSHALL EXPERIMENT?

  • lacks internal validity
  • might be because participants were the closest
  • so anxiety may be a confounding variable not a cause of accuracy
  • used retrospective data and also contained subjective self-report data (which may not be a valid measure of anxiety)
  • so anxiety may be overestimated as a factor affecting EWT accuracy
• WHAT DID YUILLE AND CUTSHALL'S DISCOVERY LEAD TO THE PRODUCTION OF?

  Yerkes Dodson Law
• WHAT DOES THE YERKES DODSON LAW STATE?

  when anxiety is moderate the reliability of EWT is very good, whereas when anxiety is too high/ too low reliability of EWT is very poor
• WHAT WAS THE SAMPLE IN YUILLE AND CUTSHALL'S STUDY?

  13 people