User:Katherine2424/Weapon focus

This was also seen in a study done in 2013 which examined weapon focus, and determined whether or not a gun automatically engages visual attention. There were two experiments that were conducted, which included targets that either depicted a gun, or another object. The conclusion of this experiment was that images of a gun did not engage attention more than that of images of other objects, including a tomato and a pocket watch. It was discovered that in order for an object to be viewed as threatening, the environment and context of the situation is of utmost importance. The context of the situation will ultimately determine whether or not weapon focus is existent in an instance of eyewitness testimony.

Furthermore, in her article, Kerri L. Pickel determined that the peculiarity of an object is a reason for the weapon focus effect. Being unusual attracts more attention to the weapon, but the object does not necessarily have to be a weapon to produce this effect. This contributes to the idea that the context of the situation has more importance than the actual weapon a victim witnesses. The mere unusual aspect of a situation with a foreign object is enough to elicit the weapon focus response.

Another way eyewitness testimony can be impaired even more by weapon focus is if the person in question is intoxicated. A study conducted in 2020 was done to observe what would happen if a person that was witnessing a crime was intoxicated and how it would affect their ability to retrieve crime scene data. The study found that if a person was intoxicated, they were more likely to focus on the weapon than people who weren’t intoxicated. This should be taken into consideration when retrieving information from people in the incident and will help to get better eyewitness testimony.

A different effect of weapon focus can be used in a way to reduce change blindness. A study in 2017 conducted a study to find a way to reduce change blindness by making use of weapon focus. What they found was that the group of subjects that make use of weapon focus was less susceptible to change blindness when the change in the picture was a weapon they focused on. This shows that weapon focus can be used in a less negative way.