The influence of context on the "weapon focus" effect.

Investigations after critical events often depend on accurate and detailed recall accounts from operational witnesses (e.g., law enforcement officers, military personnel, and emergency responders). However, the challenging, and often stressful, nature of such events, together with the cognitive demands imposed on operational witnesses as a function of their active role, may impair subsequent recall. We compared the recall performance of operational active witnesses with that of nonoperational observer witnesses for a challenging simulated scenario involving an armed perpetrator. Seventy-six police officers participated in pairs. In each pair, 1 officer (active witness) was armed and instructed to respond to the scenario as they would in an operational setting, while the other (observer witness) was instructed to simply observe the scenario. All officers then completed free reports and responded to closed questions. Active witnesses showed a pattern of heart rate activity consistent with an increased stress response during the event, and subsequently reported significantly fewer correct details about the critical phase of the scenario. The level of stress experienced during the scenario mediated the effect of officer role on memory performance. Across the sample, almost one-fifth of officers reported that the perpetrator had pointed a weapon at them although the weapon had remained in the waistband of the perpetrator’s trousers throughout the critical phase of the encounter. These findings highlight the need for investigator awareness of both the impact of operational involvement and stress-related effects on memory for ostensibly salient details, and reflect the importance of careful and ethical information elicitation techniques.

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“…Pickel, 1999) and arousal level to explore these comparisons further for operationally active and nonoperational observer witnesses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory and the operational witness: Police officer recall of firearms encounters as a function of active response role.

Hope¹,

Blocksidge²,

Gabbert³

et al. 2016

Law and Human Behavior

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“…Alternatively, an armed individual may find weapons in the hands of others less surprising, thereby reducing attention to their weapons (cf. Pickel, 1999). Neither of these explanations specifically rests on the actions available to the observer; instead, they rest on environmental circumstances that may modulate arousal or top-down expectations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Armed and attentive: Holding a weapon can bias attentional priorities in scene viewing

Biggs

Brockmole

Witt

2013

Atten Percept Psychophys

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The action-specific perception hypothesis (Witt, Current Directions in Psychological Science 20: 201-206, 2011) claims that the environment is represented with respect to potential interactions for objects present within said environment. This investigation sought to extend the hypothesis beyond perceptual mechanisms and assess whether actionspecific potential could alter attentional allocation. To do so, we examined a well-replicated attention bias in the weapon focus effect (Loftus, Loftus, & Messo, Law and Human Behaviour 1, [55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62] 1987), which represents the tendency for observers to attend more to weapons than to neutral objects. Our key manipulation altered the anticipated actionspecific potential of observers by providing them a firearm while they freely viewed scenes with and without weapons present. We replicated the original weapon focus effect using modern eye tracking and confirmed that the increase in time looking at weapons comes at a cost of less time spent looking at faces. Additionally, observers who held firearms while viewing the various scenes showed a general bias to look at faces over objects, but only if the firearm was in a readily usable position (i.e., pointed at the scenes rather than holstered at one's side). These two effects, weapon focus and the newly found bias to look more at faces when armed, canceled out one another without interacting. This evidence confirms that the action capabilities of the observer alter more than just perceptual mechanisms and that holding a weapon can change attentional priorities. Theoretical and real-world implications are discussed.

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“…The other half involved a harmless intended interaction (e.g., to give a friend a frying pan). By using a verbal description of the scenario, we were able to avoid factors associated with object complexity (Quinlan, 2013) and manner in which the object was held (Pickel, 1999). Additionally, we attempted to match, as best as possible, the average implied interpersonal distance of the intended threatening and nonthreatening actions within the referent scenarios.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When anticipation beats accuracy: Threat alters memory for dynamic scenes

et al. 2015

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Threat frequently leads to the prioritization of survival-relevant processes. Much of the work examining threat-related processing advantages has focused on the detection of static threats or long-term memory for details. In the present study, we examined immediate memory for dynamic threatening situations. We presented participants with visually neutral, dynamic stimuli using a representational momentum (RM) paradigm, and manipulated threat conceptually. Although the participants in both the threatening and nonthreatening conditions produced classic RM effects, RM was stronger for scenarios involving threat (Exps. 1 and 2). Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this effect does not generalize to the nonthreatening objects within a threatening scene, and that it does not extend to arousing happy situations. Although the increased RM effect for threatening objects by definition reflects reduced accuracy, we argue that this reduced accuracy may be offset by a superior ability to predict, and thereby evade, a moving threat.

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The influence of context on the "weapon focus" effect.

Cited by 98 publications

References 12 publications

Memory and the operational witness: Police officer recall of firearms encounters as a function of active response role.

Memory and the operational witness: Police officer recall of firearms encounters as a function of active response role.

Armed and attentive: Holding a weapon can bias attentional priorities in scene viewing

When anticipation beats accuracy: Threat alters memory for dynamic scenes

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