Of guns and geese: a meta-analytic review of the ‘weapon focus’ literature

摘要: Weapon focus is frequently cited as a factor in eyewitness testimony, and broadly defined weapon-related decrease performance on subsequent tests of memory for those elements an event or visual scene concurrent to the weapon. This effect has been attributed either (a) physiological emotional arousal that narrows attentional beam (arousal/threat hypothesis), (b) cognitive demands inherent processing unusual object (e.g. weapon) incongruent with schema representing (unusual item hypothesis). Meta-analytical techniques were applied test these theories well evaluate prospect weapon real-world criminal investigations. Our findings indicated presence overall (g= 0.53) was significantly influenced by retention interval, exposure duration, threat but unaffected whether occurred laboratory, simulation, environment.