How anxiety effects the accuracy of ewt

Question 1

what is meant by the term weapon focus

Answer 1

The concentration of a witness’s attention on a weapon, which results in reducing their ability to remember other details of the crime

Question 2

What happened in Johnston and Scotts study and year?
(this study shows the negative effects of anxiety)

Answer 2

1976
pps were told to have a seat outside of the laboratory before the study started, they were unaware that the study has already started.

2 conditions -
1 - low anxiety over heard a discussion about equipment not working a man left carrying a pen with grease on his hands
2 - high anxiety condition
- overheard a heated argument followed by the sound of glass breaking and chair been thrown a man left with a knife and blood on his hands
The pps were asked after to identify the man from a set 50 photgtaphs

Question 3

Findings of Johnston and Scotts study

Answer 3

• In condition 1 ( low anxiety they found that 49% of pps
  in condition 2 - only 33%
  it was suggested that the reason recall was poor in condition 2 was due weapon focus. ,

Question 4

evaluative sentence for Johnson and Scotts study

Answer 4

In a heightened state of arousal particularly threat and danger attention can narrow down and focus on central details - the knife and miss peripheral details such as the appearance of the man. This study demonstrates the negative effect anxiety can have on ewt

Question 5

Problems with research of Johnson and scott

Answer 5

• ethical issues (deception of the real study therefore lack of informed consent and psychological harm , lacked ability to withdraw because they were unaware of the study

Question 6

positive effects of anxiety to memory
which study and what the study entails

Answer 6

Yuille and Custshall (1986)
investigated people who have been ewt in a real life study
there were 21 witness who were all interviewed by the police after wards and
4-5 months later yuille and cutshall contacted them 21 witness and 13 of them agreed

Question 7

findings of yuille and custshall study

Answer 7

(postive effects of anxiety to ewt)
When they compared the witnesses memory across the two interviews they found high levels of accuracy of the description of the event
Importantly, witnessed who were more distressed at the time of shooting gave a more accurate account five months later illustrating the positive effects of anxiety, wen previous research demonstrated negative effects (this study found opposite effects) when the sympathetic NS is stimulated ,attention increased (93% in comparsion 75% of other witnesses)

Question 8

Evaluation of Yuille and cutshall (drawbacks)

Answer 8

However with the benefit of the high ecological validity the study is susceptible to extraneous variables such as post event discussion which could have affected their memory
- broadcast and news report after the days of the crime which could have effected their memory
- In Yuille and custhall study the ewt that were more distressed , has a high level of accuracy but also happened to be closer to the crime taking place, therefore there is the extraneous variable of proximity ( the closer you are the more you can see)

Answer 9

High ecological validity based on real ewt, their experience was real and they experienced anxiety, this gives a realistic nd valid set of results about ewt.