Weapon Focus

Page 1

Weapon focus refers to the concentration of a crime witnesses attention on a weapon and the resultant difficultly in remembering other details of the scene.

Perception experiments have shown that people fixate their gaze for longer, faster and more often on unusual or highly informative objects.

It is assumed that eye fixation data is a valid measurement of someones attention is these pieces of research.

The participant is filmed whist looking at slides or video clips,and minute accurate measurements are made of exactly where the eye was scanning. These measurements can then be plotted to reveal the greatest gaze concentration.

Using this technique Loftus et al 1987 investigated weapon focus experimentally.

New Page