1. ANXIETY AND AGE

2.  There is a difference in results found in lab experiments and in real life.  Recall after real life events is generally better.  Sympathetic arousal caused by acute stress enhances memory.  This is likely to be greater in real life situations

3.  When people know they are taking part in lab experiments they may not feel the same anxiety that they do in real life.  This may mean that their recall does not reflect the recall which would be found in a real life situation.  This means that such experiments lack ecological validity because if the setting was changed the results would be different.

4.  Loftus attempted to deal with this by creating a situation which was thought to be real.  While participants were waiting for the experiment to begin (or so they though) they witnessed an altercation between two people in a room.  Condition 1 – the interchange was friendly and a man emerged with greasy hands holding a pen  Condition 2 – the interchange was hostile and a man emerged holding knife with blood on it.  Participants were less able to correctly identify the man in a photo in condition 2.

5.  Loftus concluded that a weapon narrows the focus of the witness.

6.  Recall after real life bank robberies is better than recall in artificial situations.  This could be because participants in experiments take it less seriously and feel less anxiety.

7.  Found that people who had been threatened during bank robberies had better recall than onlookers.  This could be due to the level of anxiety.

8.  It could be that there is an optimum level for anxiety.  Recall improves up to a point and then declines if anxiety continues to increase.

9.  Lab studies might not reflect what happens in real life  Participants may respond to demand cues which may affect their behaviour and recall  This means that the findings won’t necessarily be generalisable to real life situations due to a lack of ecological validity.  There may be a certain degree of anxiety in participants taking part in experiments due to wanting to do well etc. But this may not reflect the level of anxiety they would feel in a real life situation. It may be more or less depending on what is happening.  Taking part in a lab experiment may result in participants not taking it as seriously as they would in real life.

10.  There is conflicting evidence about the effects of age on EWT.

11.  Children are very keen to take part  But often pick out the wrong person.  Made more errors than college students

12.  Young children can be accurate in their witness testimony  But are susceptible to leading questions.  They need questioning carefully.  Gordon et al. 2001

13.  Believes that differences between child and adult witnesses are overstated.  Children can provide very accurate testimony if care is taken when interviewing

14.  Studied 16-33 year olds  60 – 82 year olds  No difference in recall after 35 minutes  Significantly less recall for older witnesses after one week

15.  Flin et al. (1992)  Especially in children.  Significant forgetting after 5 months compared to adults.  Significant because court cases are often delayed

16.  Yarney (1984)  May be more prone to errors of recall than younger witnesses.  80% of elderly (70+) witnesses failed to mention that the attacker had a knife compared to  20% of younger adults.

17.  Elderly participants were more susceptible to the effects of misleading information compared to middle-aged participants.

18.  Used 3 age groups  18-25  35 – 45  55 – 78  The young and middle- aged were significantly more accurate at identifying photos  But each age group were better when identifying photos from their own age group

19.  18 – 44 year olds were more confident in their recall than  45 – 65 year olds when asked to recall physical characteristics of a young woman to whom they had spoken for 15 seconds just 2 minutes earlier.  No difference in the accuracy of their recall..

20.  The same criticisms can apply as before with reference to the artificiality of lab experiments.  Care should be taken when using children in experiments to ensure that they are not put under stress.  Deception may be needed in some experiments on EWT which also presents an ethical issue.  Researcher bias may affect the way participants are questioned and this may affect the result.  Individual differences should be considered as people vary in their memory ability.

21.  It is wrong to say that old people make poorer witnesses.  This could be a socially sensitive issue if it results in a particular age group being labelled as untrustworthy when it comes to remembering things.  Overall, it is important to note that the very young and the elderly are more susceptible to misleading information and so should be questioned very carefully.