eyewitness:anxiety

• some research suggest

  Anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents us from paying attention to important cues which makes recall worse.-
• Johnson and scott

  • They asked participants to sit in a  waiting room in which they heard an argument coming from an adjoining room.
  • They then saw a man running through-one condition he was holding a pen filled with grease (low anxiety)
  • other condition a knife covered in blood (high anxiety)
• johnson and scott fidnings

  • had to pick the man out of 50 photos.
  • 49% low anxiety condition could identify him
  • 33% identified him in high anxiety condition
  • anxiety decreased accuracy
• what is the weapon focus effect?

  • Loftus suggested people's attention is on the central feature of the crime scene (commonly the weapon),this is often the detriment of their memory recall of other details.
  • researchers followed the eye movement in j+s study and found that the majority of people were focused on the weapon 
• • Alternative that high anxiety causes more enduring memeoriess 
  • Hubinette and christianson suggested that accuracy is not reduced by anxiety or stress
  • questioned 58 people present at a bank robbery 4-16 months after the events happened.
  • two types- bystanders (low anxiety) and victims (classed as high anxiety) all
  • could generally remember good detail from the event however victims remembered best of all
• what is the yerkes-dobson law

  The Yerkes-Dodson law states that performance on a task improves with increased arousal or stress up to a point, after which it starts to decline. This means that moderate levels of anxiety may actually enhance memory recall, but high levels can have a detrimental effect.