Verbalizing information salient to face identification does not cause verbal overshadowing¹

Abstract

Attempting to describe a face can lead to subsequent recognition impairments, i.e., verbal overshadowing. A new explanation of the verbal overshadowing effect was tested by manipulating whether participants described features that were more or less salient for face identifi cation. To manipulate the distinguishing features, distractor faces were created with gray scale photographs of men identical to the targets except for the eyes and mouth (Study 1) or eyebrows and nose (Study 2). In both studies, participants (Study 1: N = 177, 81 men, M age = 18.9 yr.; Study 2: N = 144, 133 men, M age = 20.5 yr.) were assigned to one of two verbalization conditions or a control condition. After a target face was presented, participants in the two verbalization conditions were asked to describe specifi c features-either eyes and mouth, or eyebrows and nose-before a recognition test. Participants in the control condition completed a fi ller task. The measure of recognition was whether participants could recognize the target correctly. Results showed that describing the eyes and mouth did not cause signifi cant verbal overshadowing in either Study 1 or 2, while describing the eyebrows and nose caused statistically signifi cant verbal overshadowing in Study 2. Verbalizing information important for face identifi cation did not cause verbal overshadowing regardless of the distinguishability of described features.