structural:expansion, structural:reformatting, linguistic:translation, stylistic:tone
Weapons focus

When an eyewitness of a crime focuses their attention on a weapon, it reduces their attention to other details, and thus, diminishes the reliability of their memory of the incident. The presence of a weapon impacts some details of the crime committed, such as what the assailant is wearing or other surrounding visual markers. The use of lineups shows its production isn't as impacted, with certain studies showing no effect, while others having less accuracy. The first controlled experiment on weapons focus (I) was conducted by Elizabeth Loftus. Participants were shown slides of individuals in a fast-food restaurant, either (c) handing a check to the cashier or (g) pointing a gun at the cashier. Following this, participants were given a short retention interval, after which they completed a questionnaire, and were then shown a fair-perpetrator 12-person lineup. In the first experiment, the participant's memory was slightly worse. In the second, the assailant was correctly identified slightly less often in the weapon condition. The questionnaire and line-up results of experiment II showed those in the g group with worse memory, compared to the control-conditioned group.