Anxiety

• What is it called when anxiety has a negative effect on memory, in the presence of a weapon

  weapon focus
• Who conducted research into the negative effects on memory (weapon focus)

  Craig Johnson and William Scott (1976)
• Describe the procedure of Johnson and Scott's 1976 study into weapon focus

  • ppts believed they were in a lab study, waited in waiting room
  • Low anxiety = heard a casual conversation, a man walked past them carrying a pen with grease on their hands
  • High anxiety = overheard a heated argument and breaking glass, a man walked out holding a knife covered in blood
• Describe the findings (conclusion) of Johnson and Scott's 1976 study into weapon focus

  Ppts picked out the man from a set of 50 photos

  Low anxiety = 49%

  High anxiety = 33%

  > tunnel theory of memory says that their focus was on the weapon (central event), not remembering anything else
• Who researched the positive effects of anxiety on recall?

  John Yuille and Judith Cutshall (1986)
• Why is there a positive effect of anxiety on recall?

  Arousal = fight or flight response is triggered, increasing alterness
• Describe the procedure of John Yuille and Judith Cutshall (1986)

  • Conducted a study of an actual shooting in Vancouver gun shop
  • owner shot a theif dead - 21 witnesses, 13 took part
  • interviewed 4-5 months after the incident and compared to police reports, accuracy determined by the number of details reported in each account
  • Asked to rate how stressed they felt at the time (on 7-point scale) and any emotional problems since
• Describe the findings of Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

  Witnesses were accurate in their accounts, little change in recall

  • ppts who reported highest level of stress were most accurate 88%
  • 75% for less stressed group
• Explain the contradictory findings of anxiety

  Robert Yerkes and John Dodson (1908)

  > emotional arousal and performance looks like an inverted U
• Describe the limitation of Johnson and Scott's 1976 proposed by Kerri Pickel (1998)

  Unusualness not anxiety

  > Kerri Pickel (1998)

  • conducted an experiment using: scissors, a handgun, a wallet, raw chicken as handheld items in a hairdressing salon video

  > EWT significantly worse in the high unusualness conditions (chicken, handgun)

  -> Weapon focus does not tell us about anxiety
• Describe the research support for negative effects

  Tim Valentine and Jan Mesout (2009)

  Those entering the london dungeons were given wireless heart monitors to record their anxiety. The high-anxiety group did significantly worse at recalling the actor (17% correctly identified the actor) than the low-anxiety group (75% accurate).
• Describe the research support for positive effects of anxiety

  Sven-Åke Christianson and Birgitta Hübinette (1993)

  • interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden
  • Some witnesses directly involved (worked there), some indirectly involved (bystanders) = assumed those involved experienced higher anxiety
  • Recall more than 75% across all witnesses, especially high in those directly involved
• What is the counterpoint to the research conducted by Christianson and Hübinette (1993)

  interviewed the ppts months after the event (4-15)

  > lack of control over confounding variables