Anxiety Affecting EWT

Anxiety Affecting EWT

1. Negative effect on recall

   • Anxiety stops us from paying attention to important cues
   • Johnson and Scott led participants to believe they were doing lab study
     • Got seated then heard arguing next room and then glass smashing followed by a man walking out with a paper knife and blood (high-anxiety)
     • Man walks through with grease and pen (low-anxiety)
   • Participants given 50 photos and 49% for pen but only 33% for blood-covered knife
     • Tunnel theory of memory argues that the witness's attention narrows to weapon as it causes anxiety

2. Positive effect on recall

   • Fight or flight triggers our alertness
   • Yuille and Cutshall used 13 people from real-life shooting in Canada and the interviews took 4-5 months after the incident which were compared to the police interviews in the beginning
     • Then asked to rate their stress on 7-point scale and asked about emotional problems such as sleeplessness
   • Witness very accurate to the first interview about the situation but details like colour of items, height, weight, age etc were less accurate
     • Participants which were higher on the stress were most accurate (about 88% compares to 75% of less stressed)

3. Explaining contradictory findings

   • Yerkes and Dodson said that the relationship with recall and anxiety is like an 'inverted U'
   • Deffenbacher used Yerkes-Dodson Law and said lower levels cause less recall but there's an optimal level which gets most recall and anymore stress sees a decline

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