Factors affecting recall

• Arousal

  • Witnessing a crime can be very stressful causing arousal levels to be very high
  • This could make it difficult to accurately take in information at the time of the event, meaning what is actually witnessed is encoded wrong in memory causing later recall to be different to what actually happened
  • For most witnesses, giving evidence in court is a stressful experience, because not only do they have to recall unpleasant events, but also because the courtroom itself is an alien/unusual environment causing arousal levels to be high.
• Strength 1 of Arousal

  Deffenbacher (83) found that accuracy is poor when emotional arousal is either too high or too low, showing that optimum level of arousal is needed for recall to be accurate of a crime.
• Weakness 1 of Arousal

  Yuille et al (1986) found accuracy of the witnesses at a real life shooting in Canada was 82% at the time of the event. This shows that the level of involvement at the time of the crime can create a flashbulb memory of the event due to increased attention to details of the crime, contradicting arousal.
• Weapon focus effect

  • In crime scenes involving a weapon, person's attention becomes diverted to the immediate threat of that weapon due to fear of being harmed
  • This leaves less attention for other details of the scene.
  • This will cause the later recall of the incident to become les reliable as the witness memory of the event is not an accurate replication of what was initially seen during the crime.
  • This may be due to the unusualness of an event and simply the danger posed by the weapon.