Flashcards
Anxiety
Cards in this deck (6)
- 1Why may anxiety lead to poor recall?In a stressful situation, we tend to focus on what makes us feel anxious, so exclude other information about the situation.
- 2What did Clifford and Scott (1978) find?People who saw a film of a violent attack remembered fewer than 40 items of information about the event than a control group who saw a less stressful version. Since a real life crime is even more stressful, the effects of anxiety are even more likely for real life.
- 3How did Yuille and Cutshall (1986) proceed to test anxiety?21 witnesses who observed a shooting in Canada where 1 person was killed and 2nd seriously injured were interviews by the police, and 13 witnesses (aged 15-32) did a research interview 4-5 months after the event. They were also asked to rate how stressed they felt using a 7 point scale.
- 4What did Yuille and Cutshall find?Witnesses were highly accurate in their accounts, and there was little change in amount or accuracy of recall after 5 months. The study also showed that stress levels did not have an effect on memory, contrary to lab findings. Participants who reported high levels of stress were the most accurate - 88% compared to 75% for the less stressed group.
- 5What is a strength of this study?High ecological validity compared to lab studies which tend to control variables and use student populations as research participants.
- 6What is a weakness of this study?Extraneous variable - the witnesses who experienced the highest levels of stress were closer to the event, which may have helped memory recall.
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- Flashcards on Anxiety, created by Sam Ferstenberg on 15/05/2019.
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- Sam Ferstenberg
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