Understanding the weapon focus effect: The role of threat, unusualness, exposure duration, and scene complexity

Mansour, Jamal K.; Hamilton, Claire M.; Gibson, Matthew T.

doi:10.1002/acp.3515

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 60 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Bayes factors indicated that the data from all our experiments provide evidence against a memory-related WFE, with evidence being moderate for Experiments 1 and 2 and strong for Experiment 3 . Moreover, several recent studies similarly found weapon presence to have no effect on or even enhance memory for at least some measures or experimental conditions (Harvey et al, 2020 ; Harvey & Sekulla, 2021 ; Mansour et al, 2019 ; Nyman et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Some studies found a classic WFE (Hope & Wright, 2007 ; Kim et al, 2014 ; Maass & Köhnken, 1989 ; Saunders, 2009 ), but only Hope and Wright ( 2007 ) included a gun as a weapon. In contrast, several recent European studies found that the WFE occurred only under certain conditions (Harvey & Sekulla, 2021 ; Mansour et al, 2019 ) or not at all (Harvey et al, 2020 ; Nyman et al, 2020 ). All of these more recent studies have in common that even reversed effects were found for some measures or experimental conditions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 89%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: Do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions?

Körner

Faul

Nuthmann

2023

Atten Percept Psychophys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The presence of a weapon in a scene has been found to attract observers’ attention and to impair their memory of the person holding the weapon. Here, we examined the role of attention in this weapon focus effect (WFE) under different viewing conditions. German participants viewed stimuli in which a man committed a robbery while holding a gun or a cell phone. The stimuli were based on material used in a recent U.S. study reporting large memory effects. Recording eye movements allowed us to test whether observers’ attention in the gun condition shifted away from the perpetrator towards the gun, compared with the phone condition. When using videos (Experiment 1), weapon presence did not appear to modulate the viewing time for the perpetrator, whereas the evidence concerning the critical object remained inconclusive. When using slide shows (Experiment 2), the gun attracted more gaze than the phone, replicating previous research. However, the attentional shift towards the weapon did not come at a cost of viewing time on the perpetrator. In both experiments, observers focused their attention predominantly on the depicted people and much less on the gun or phone. The presence of a weapon did not cause participants to recall fewer details about the perpetrator’s appearance in either experiment. This null effect was replicated in an online study using the original videos and testing more participants. The results seem at odds with the attention-shift explanation of the WFE. Moreover, the results indicate that the WFE is not a universal phenomenon.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

mentioning

confidence: 89%

Revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: Do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions?

Körner

Faul

Nuthmann

2023

Atten Percept Psychophys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Trade-off effects in memory were first considered as an attentional bias in favor of central emotional elements. For instance, research on the weapon focus effect pointed out that visual focus was directed to the emotional content (i.e., the weapon), whereas peripheral details such as the individual holding the weapon were less explored ( Saunders, 2009 ; Kocab and Sporer, 2016 ; Mansour et al, 2019 ; for reviews, see Fawcett et al, 2013 ). Furthermore, emotional information had more contrast than neutral information did, leading to a pop-out effect: Salient emotional information captures attention (i.e., attentional magnets , Schmidt and Saari, 2007 ; Talmi et al, 2007 ; Hamann, 2009 ; Mennie, 2015 ; see also attentional narrowing , Winograd, 1981 ; Chipchase and Chapman, 2013 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional scene remembering: A combination of disturbing and facilitating effects of emotion?

Bouvarel

Gardette

Saint-Macary

et al. 2022

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An emotion-induced memory trade-off effect is frequently reported when participants have to memorize complex items that include both neutral and emotional features. This bias corresponds to better remembering of central emotional information accompanied by poor performance related to neutral background information. Although the trade-off effect has been mainly associated with attentional bias toward emotional content, findings suggest that other non-attentional cognitive processes could also be involved. The aim of this work was to assess whether emotional effects would be reported apart from their influence on attentional processing in an immediate delay memory task. Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, manipulation of the diffusion quality of emotional content allowed us to select focal emotional pictures vs. diffuse emotional pictures, which prevented attentional focus. The two studies that followed consisted of a recognition task of low- and high-complexity pictures in which we used partial visual cues during the test that could display either the emotional elements (i.e., central patch cues, Study 2) or the peripheral elements (i.e., peripheral patch cues, Study 3) of the focal emotional pictures. Results from Studies 2 and 3 replicated traditional trade-off effects only for high-complexity pictures. In addition, diffuse emotional pictures were associated with lower memory performance than were neutral pictures, suggesting that emotion features could both disturb and enhance (via their attentional effect) encoding processes.

show abstract