An Examination of the interaction between scene complexity and duration on the weapon focus effect
Citation
(2016) An Examination of the interaction between scene complexity and duration on the weapon focus effect, no. 62.
Abstract
During a situation of which a crime has taken place, a weapon has been found to have
a detrimental impact for the details of the event. Explanations of why this phenomenon,
known as the weapon focus effect, occurs, has divided psychological literature. Previous
research has explored how factors of scene-duration and scene-complexity can affect this
weapon focus. This current study aims to build on the literature by exploring the main effects
of object-threat, object-unusualness, scene-complexity and scene-duration in a multifactorial
design. Target-present and target absent lineups were also included in conjunction with the
main effects in order to further understand the factors that elicit a weapon focus. Scenecomplexity
was found to be significant in measures of cued-recall, with scene-duration found
to be significant in recognition scores. An interaction between scene-duration, object-threat
and object-unusualness was also observed in recognition scores. Significant effects were of
object-unusualness as well as scene-complexity were found to result in lower proportions of
correct identifications in target-present lineups. An interaction was also discovered in correct
identifications of target-present lineups between scene-duration and object-threat. The results
suggest that the variable of scene-duration elicits a detrimental effect to memory recall.
General implications and recommendations for future research are also deliberated.