Anxiety

• what is the theory 1 of anxiety?

  this suggests that anxiety has a negative effect on recall, anxiety will create physiological arousal in the body which prevents us paying attention to important cues, so recall is worse
• what is the weapon focus effect?

  the tendency for a victim to focus their attention on a weapon rather than the perpetrator, consequently their recall of other details and information is likely to be poor
• The Johnson and Scott (1976) study investigated the effect of weapons on the accuracy of recall of a witness.
• what is the procedure of the Johnson and Scott (1976) study?

  
  

  led participants to believe they were going to take part in a lab study. While seated in a waiting room the participants heard an argument in the next room. In the low anxiety' condition, a man then walked through the waiting area, carrying a pen with grease on his hands. In the high anxiety condition, participants overheard the same heated argument but this time accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A man then walked out of the room holding a knife that was covered in blood;
• what were the findings and conclusions of the Johnson and Scott (1976) study?

  • Findings - the participants later picked out the man from a set of 50 photos. 49% of the participants who had seen the man carrying the pen were able to correctly identify him compared to just 33% for the man carrying the knife.
  • Conclusions - the tunnel theory of memory argues that a witness's attention narrows to focus on a weapon, because it is the source of anxiety.
• what is theory 2 of anxiety?

  This suggests that anxiety has a positive effect on recall. The stress of witnessing a crime creates anxiety through physiological arousal within the body. The fight or flight response is triggered which increases alertness and enhances memory.
• describe the Yuille and Cutshall (1986) study

  • conducted a study of a real-life shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver, Canada
  • shop owner shot a thief dead
  • 21 witnesses - 13 agreed to take part in study
  • interviews were held 4-5 months after incident and these were compared with original police interviews made at time of shooting
  • accuracy was determined by number of details reported to each account
  • witnesses were asked to rate how stressed they felt at time of incident using a 7-point scale and asked if they had any emotional problems since (e.g. sleeplessnes)
• What were the findings of the Yuille and Cutshall (1986) study?

  • The witnesses were very accurate in their accounts as there was little change in the amount or accuracy after 5 months.
  • Though some details were less accurate, such as recollection of the colour of items and age/ height /weight estimates.
  • Those participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (88% compared to 75% for the less stressed group)
• what is the Yerkes-Dodson Law (1908)?

  • A graph which describes the empirical relationship between stress and performance.
  • It suggests that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a certain point.
  • When stress levels get too high, performance decreases.
  • Task performance is best when arousal levels are in the middle of the range.
  • This could be applied to EWT by suggesting that the best performance of real events will happen when anxiety levels are medium.
• Parker et al (2006):

  • One problem with many lab-based and real life studies of anxiety is that they only compare high and low anxiety groups. The inverted-U theory cannot be properly tested unless there is a moderate anxiety group as well.
  • Procedures - interviewed people who had been affected by Hurricane Andrew in the USA in 1992.
  • The researchers defined anxiety in terms of the amount of damage the participants suffered to their homes.
  • Findings - the researchers found that there was a link between the level of recall and the amount of damage / anxiety experienced.
• describe the Valentine and Mesout (2009) study

  • carried out study in the real-life setting of London Dungeon which is designed to frighten with many ‘scares’
  • visitors offered a reduced entrance fee if they agreed to complete questionnaires at the end of their visit to assess their levels of self-reported anxiety
  • they wore wireless heart monitors to confirm they were experiencing anxiety
  • on the basis of there two measures participants were divided into high anxiety and low anxiety
• what were participants asked to do after going into the dungeon labyrinth in the Valentine and Mesout (2009) study?

  • to describe a person encountered on the Labyrinth (played by an actor)
  • found that high anxiety participants recalled the fewest correct details of the actor and made more mistakes
  • 17% high anxiety correctly identified actor in a line-up compared to 75% correct identification by those in low anxiety group
• what is the external validity in the Johnson and Scott (1976) study?

  • Medium - it was an artificial setting but within that it was staged as a real-life event
• what is the external validity in the Yuille and Cutshall (1986) study?

  • High - participants had experienced real anxiety in an everyday setting
• what is the external validity in the Parker et al (2006) study?

  High - participants had experienced real anxiety in an everyday setting
• what is the external validity of the Valentine and Mesout (2009) study?

  Fairly High - was a real-life setting though the anxiety was not caused by anything really threatening
• what are the positives and negatives of the Johnson and Scott (1976) study?

  • there was good control over variables - high external validity (lab test)
  • ethical issues - induced anxiety, risk of harm
  • demand characteristics
  • study may test surprise rather than anxiety
• what are positives and negatives of the Yuille and Cutshall (1986) study?

  • used real witnesses so comparisons of accuracy of EWT over several months can be tested in a valid way
  • not all witnesses agreed to be re-interviewed so it may not be representative sample of the original participants (most traumatised weren’t interviewed?)
• what are positives and negatives of the Parker et al (2006) study?

  • also measured moderate levels - enables better understanding of relationship between anxiety and witness accuracy
  • anxiety was operationalised by measuring the amount of damage done to homes - this may not reflect their experienced anxiety
• what are positives and negatives of the Valentine and Mesout (2009) study?

  • two measures of anxiety including heart monitor makes it an accurate, objective and quantitative of anxiety
  • quasi-experiment so no random allocation to conditions and participant variables may have acted as confounding variables
• what are main evaluation points?

  • strength of theory that anxiety affected eyewitness testimony is that there is supportive evidence e.g. Johnson and Scott
  • weakness of this theory is that the research is contradictory, thus creating two theories e.g. Yuille and Cutshall
  • a final weakness is that lots of the experimental evidence tends to be lab based, thus lacking in ecological validity