anxiety

• The factors effecting eyewitness testimony are anxiety and misleading information
• The 2 explainations for anxiety effecting memory are that it has a negative and positive effect on memory
• yullie and cutshall found that anxiety had a positive effect on EWT accuracy. participants who reported high levels of anxiety were 88% accurate on their recall of a shooting in a gun shop than those who reported low levels of anxiety who were 75% accurate
• one theory of the effect of anxiety on recall is that it decreases accuracy - e.g- weapon focus effect, suggests weapons are the cause of anxiety as witnesses are distracted, focusing on the weapon rather than the criminal's appearance
• another theory of the effect of anxiety on recall is that it increases accuracy - when a person is anxious they are more alert and aware of their surroundings
• johnson & scott - naive participants placed outside a lab waiting for the 'experiment' to begin, when in fact it already had. half of the participants overheard a conversation about equipment failure and then saw a man walk out with a greasy pen. the other half heard a hostile conversation with breaking glass and then saw a man walk out holding a bloody knife. - more participants correctly identified the man with the pen (49%) than the man with the knife (33%) - due to weapon focus effect
• anxiety effecting EWT:

  The Yerkes-Dodson law states that performance on a task improves with increased anxiety or stress up to a point, after which it starts to decline. - essentially anxiety improves the accuracy of EWT up to a point
• It is argued that Johnson and Scott did not test anxiety but instead fear or surprise - This suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to surprise rather than anxiety
• Pikel's research supports Johnson and Scotts findings as more people recalled the appearance of the man holding raw chicken than the man holding scissors - due to the weapon focus effect - people were looking at the scissors rather than the appearance of the man