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Asked by anon-188716 to Warren, Paul, Alex on 8 Nov 2018.
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Alex Reid answered on 8 Nov 2018:
Hi thanks for the question. I am presently working on something called the ‘weapon focus effect’ and it’s relationship with sleep. When someone gets mugged they tend to, rather understandably, focus on the weapon pointed at them rather than the person pointing it at them. This makes it hard for eyewitness and victims of crimes to accurately determine who the criminal was and what they looked like. Sleep may make enhance this issue, and we are looking into that. Sleep has been shown to promote a trade-off for the memory of foreground details at the expense of background details when the situation is negative but not neutral. For example, previous research found this trade-off after sleep when pictures were negative (a car crash) compared to neutral (a car). When people saw the car crash, they remembered less detail about the background after sleep. This effect was not present when the same background was used but with a normal car. This finding might be because sleep helps target negative memories in particular, because they may be particularly important for our survival. I am currently working on a study to see if this happens with handheld weapons, not cars. It could have implications for when the police interview witnesses. If sleep enhances the memory of the weapon even more (i.e. the weapon focus effect) then it would be a good idea to interview crime victims before they sleep after a crime, not after.
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Paul Matusz answered on 11 Nov 2018:
Hi Isla,
As I see the question is also addressed to me, I’ll add my motivation. The goal of my research is to use what we know about the mind and the brain and the tools of neuroimaging to better understand and improve people’s functioning in real environments. illing out these lacks in knowledge is probably the most important for supporting how children learn every day as well as in rehabilitation of different disorders – from kids not seeing very well (like when they have a “lazy eye” to kids having problem with learning or older adults who have problems with their memory. To help these people, I am at the same time interested in how we can use technology – tablets, virtual reality, even robots – to make learning – and rehabilitation (often very boring and very long!) more fun and engaging and more adjustable.
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