Anxiety effects on memory

• Eyewitness testimony


  Factors affecting
• Anxiety


  • Strong physical emotional effects
  • Not clear if makes recall worse or better
• Scott gathered participants for a lab study
• Lab study procedure


  1. Participants heard an argument in the waiting room

  2. Two conditions: pen grease on hands, paper knife breaking glass and blood

  3. Participants then picked out the man from 50 pictures
• Accuracy of participant identification


  • Low anxiety group 48% accurate
  • High anxiety group 33% accurate
• Anxiety


  Physiological arousal which stops us paying attention, tunnel theory focuses on weapon as the source of anxiety
• Positive effects of anxiety

  • Cutsnall used 13 witnesses from a real life robbery with a gun
  • Accuracy of details reported was higher with higher levels of anxiety, despite changes in colours and age
• Anxiety causes physiological arousal for fight or flight which increases alertness
• Inverted U theory

  Low levels of anxiety = high recall, higher levels = low recall, optimum of middle anxiety best recall
• Weapon focus effect might not be relevant, Scott study might instead test surprise rather than anxiety
• Weapon focus effect is on unusualness/anxiety, not anxiety on eyewitness testimony
• Field studies lack control, Cutsnall interviewed real eyewitnesses some time after the event, different life situations could have occurred which the researcher had no control of
• Ethical issues as anxiety can have psychological consequences, but benefits of real-life studies outweigh reasons to study deception