Eyewitnesses are often susceptible to recollection failures and memory distortions. These failures and distortions are influenced by several factors. The present review will discuss two such important factors, attention failures and stress. We argue that acute stress, often experienced by eyewitnesses and victims of crimes, directly influences attentional processes, which likely has downstream consequences for memory. Attentional failures may result in individuals missing something unusual or important in a complex visual field. Amongst eyewitnesses, this can lead to individuals missing details, (...) even unusual or important central details, regarding the crime. Surprisingly, few studies have investigated attentional failures in eyewitness scenarios, and none have investigated the relationship between stress, attention, and witness memory. This review will discuss the impact of attentional failures, mainly those resulting from inattentional blindness, in applied contexts in order to bridge to eyewitness scenarios. In addition, we will integrate the applied literature on attentional failures with literature that examines the influences of arousal and stress on attention. We will conclude by presenting how future research may tease apart the independent contributions of arousal and stress on attentional failures and successes and how this research may inform understanding of eyewitness reliability. (shrink)

The current study addresses how information whose processing was not part of task requirement is represented in memory. Using a novel measure, recognition memory for unattended material was assessed twice, once when it appeared with the same attended study target and once with a new target. The data reveal memory for unattended study information only in the old target condition. Results suggest that the entire study event is encoded and represented in a memory trace, which contains both attended target information (...) along with unattended context information. In conclusion, manifestation of unattended memory may be dependent on the presence of old target information at test. (shrink)

The present commentary addresses the main results obtained in the Butler and Klein [Butler, B. C., & Klein, R. . Inattentional blindness for ignored words: Comparison of explicit and implicit memory tasks. Consciousness and Cognition, 18, 811–819.] study and discusses them in relation to the Perceptual Load Theory of Lavie [Lavie, N. . Perceptual load as a necessary condition for selective attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 21, 451–68.]. The authors claim that the use of implicit indexes (...) of conceptual distractor processing in high-load situations would be an important addition to the load literature, which would benefit the research field regardless of their positive or negative findings. (shrink)