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

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...

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Autores principales: Körner, Hannes M., Faul, Franz, Nuthmann, Antje
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10545598/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36725782
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-022-02643-8
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author Körner, Hannes M.
Faul, Franz
Nuthmann, Antje
author_facet Körner, Hannes M.
Faul, Franz
Nuthmann, Antje
author_sort Körner, Hannes M.
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-105455982023-10-04 Revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: Do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions? Körner, Hannes M. Faul, Franz Nuthmann, Antje Atten Percept Psychophys Article 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. Springer US 2023-02-01 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10545598/ /pubmed/36725782 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-022-02643-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Körner, Hannes M.
Faul, Franz
Nuthmann, Antje
Revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: Do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions?
title Revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: Do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions?
title_full Revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: Do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions?
title_fullStr Revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: Do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions?
title_full_unstemmed Revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: Do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions?
title_short Revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: Do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions?
title_sort revisiting the role of attention in the “weapon focus effect”: do weapons draw gaze away from the perpetrator under naturalistic viewing conditions?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10545598/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36725782
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-022-02643-8
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