Anxiety

• Anxiety?

  A mental state of arousal that includes feelings of extreme concern and tension

  This is often accompanied by physiological changes such as increased heartrate
• Decreases recall?

  High levels of anxiety produce reduced recall of the criminals face
• Weapon focus effect?

  One explanation - weapons are a cause of anxiety, witnesses are distracted, focusing attention on the weapon rather than the criminal
• Increased recall?

  A state of arousal improves alertness and awareness of the situation and surroundings

  The strong emotions felt could improve memory encoding
• Yerks-Dodson Law of Arousal?

  EWT accuracy increases as anxiety raises as the witness becomes alter

  At a point anxiety becomes too high and more stress/distraction results in lower accuracy