A01

• Define Anxiety

  -An unpleasant emotional state that is often accompanied by increased heart rate and rapid breathing i.e. physiological arousal.
• What was the aim of Johnson and Scott's research

  -to investigate the weapon focus effect.
• Define the weapon focus effect

  -occurs when a weapon distracts eyewitnesses, harming memory for the perpetrator and other details.

  -One explanation is that weapons are unusual in most contexts, and unusual objects distract eyewitnesses
• Outline the method

  -participants were sat in waiting room, where they overheard an argument in the adjoining room.

  -They then saw a man running from the room with either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety condition) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety condition).

  -Participants were then asked to identify the man from a set of photographs.
• What were the results

  -the mean accuracy of low anxiety condition was 49% and the mean accuracy of high anxiety condition was 33%.
• What was the conclusion

  -that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of EWT.
• What was the aim of Christianson and Hubinette

  -to see if anxiety enhanced accuracy of recall.
• Outline the method

  -they used 58 real witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden. The witnesses were either :

  -HIGH ANXIETY GROUP victims (bank teller) ​

  -LOW ANXIETY GROUP bystanders (other employee or customer)

  -the interviews were conducted 4-15 months after the robberies
• What were the findings

  -Researchers found all witnesses showed generally good recall for details of robbery itself (75% accurate recall).

  -The victims in the high anxiety group had the best recall of all.
• What was the conclusion

  -​This suggests that anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall.
• What did Deffenbacher (1983) do

  -Conducted a meta-analysis of 21 studies into anxiety and accuracy of EWT.

  -He found that 10 of these studies had linked higher arousal levels to eye witness accuracy and 11 had found the opposite.

  -suggested the Yerkes-Dodson effect can account for this inconsistency.
• What is the yerkes dodson law

  -Moderate levels of anxiety improve recall of a crime because the person is alert and focused.

  -Too little anxiety (e.g. in lab studies where there's no real danger) may lead to poor memory, as the event isn’t emotionally engaging.

  -Too much anxiety (e.g. being traumatised during a violent crime) may cause panic, narrowed attention, or memory blocking, leading to inaccurate recall.
• This helps explain why

  In EWT, this helps explain why some studies find anxiety helps memory and others find it harms it.