Institute of Psychology, Kiel University, Olshausenstr. 62, 24118, Kiel, Germany.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2023 Aug;85(6):1868-1887. doi: 10.3758/s13414-022-02643-8. Epub 2023 Feb 1.
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.
在现场发现武器会吸引观察者的注意力，并损害他们对持有武器的人的记忆。在这里，我们在不同的观察条件下研究了注意力在这种武器焦点效应（WFE）中的作用。德国参与者观看了一名男子持枪或持手机抢劫的刺激物。这些刺激物是基于最近在美国一项研究中使用的材料，该研究报告了很大的记忆效应。记录眼动使我们能够测试在枪的情况下，观察者的注意力是否会从犯罪者转移到枪上，而不是手机上。当使用视频（实验 1）时，武器的存在似乎不会调节对犯罪者的观看时间，而关于关键物体的证据仍然不确定。当使用幻灯片（实验 2）时，枪比手机吸引了更多的目光，这复制了以前的研究。然而，对武器的注意力转移并没有以牺牲对犯罪者的观看时间为代价。在这两个实验中，观察者主要关注所描绘的人，而对枪或手机的关注较少。在这两个实验中，武器的存在都没有导致参与者回忆起犯罪者外貌的细节更少。这一无效结果在一项使用原始视频并测试更多参与者的在线研究中得到了复制。结果似乎与 WFE 的注意力转移解释不一致。此外，结果表明 WFE 不是一种普遍现象。
