Anxiety AO3

• -One limitation: may not have tested anxiety. The reason participants focused on the weapon may be because they were surprised rather than scared. Pickle conducted an experiment using scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as the hand-held items in a hairdressing salon video. EW accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun). This suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety and therefore tells us nothing specifically about the effects of anxiety on EWT.
• +One strength: evidence supporting the view that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of recall. The study by Valentine and Mesout supports the research on weapon focus, finding negative effects on recall. The researchers used an objective measure (heartrate) to divide participants into high and low anxiety groups. In the study anxiety clearly disrupted the participants ability to recall details about the actor in the London Dungeons Labyrinth. This suggests that a high level of anxiety does have a negative effect on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event.
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  +One strength: evidence shows that anxiety can have positive effects on the accuracy of recall. Christianson and Hübinette interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden. Some of the witnesses were directly involved-workers - and some were indirectly involved -bystanders. The researchers assumed that those directly involved would experience the most anxiety.
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  +It was found that recall was more than 75% accurate across all witnesses. The direct victims were even more accurate. The findings from actual crimes confirms that anxiety doesn't reduce the accuracy of recall for eyewitnesses and may even enhance it.
• -Christianson & Hübinette interviewed their participants several months after the event (15 months). Therefore the researchers had no control over what happened to the participants in the interviewing time - post event discussions. The effects of anxiety may have been overwhelmed by these other factors and impossible to assess by the time the participants were interviewed. Therefore its possible that a lack of control over confounding variables may be responsible for these findigs invalidating their support.