Eyewitness Testimony and Anxiety

• How many post conviction DNA exonerations have there been in the USA?

  218
• How many out of the 218 served time on death row?

  16
• What was the average age of exonerates at the time of their wrongful conviction?

  26
• What were the races of the exonerates?

  134 African Americans

  59 Caucasians

  19 Latinos

  1 Asian American
• What are the causal factors in inaccuracy of EWT?

  Leading questions

  Post event discussion

  Anxiety
• How can we improve the accuracy of EW recall?

  Cognitive interview
• Anxiety is an unpleasant emotional state where we fear something bad is about to happen. People often become anxious when they are in stressful situations. This is usually accompanied by physiological arousal i.e. pounding heart, shallow breathing and sweating
• Anxiety had a detrimental effect on memory generally. According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, an increase in arousal improves performance but only up to a point. Once arousal has passed a critical point called the optimum, performance tends to decline. A possible interpretation of the research on violence distraction is that witnessing violence raises witnesses' arousal level past optimum, leading to poorer memory performance.