Verbal overshadowing of multiple face recognition: Effects on remembering and knowing over time

Abstract

“Verbal overshadowing”, the phenomenon whereby the verbal reporting of a visual memory of a face interferes with subsequent recognition of that face, arises for the presentation of multiple faces following a single face description. We examined the time course of verbal overshadowing in the multiple face paradigm, and its influence on recollection and familiarity-based recognition judgements. Participants were presented with a series of faces and then described a further face (or not, in the control condition). Study faces were subsequently discriminated from distractors at either a short or long lag after initial presentation, in a yes/no recognition task using the remember/know procedure. Verbal overshadowing was most apparent at the short lag, for discrimination and false “know” judgements. We discuss these findings in terms of the nature of verbal interference in this paradigm.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by ESRC research grant RES000-23-0057 to Toby J. Lloyd-Jones.

Notes

¹An alternative but less powerful analysis is to compare description versus no description conditions between groups, when both groups received these conditions as either the first or second experimental block. When we do this, there was some evidence of a trend towards overshadowing when the description and no description condition was each presented first to participants: For familiarity estimates derived for correct recognition decisions, there was a trend towards a Description×Lag interaction, F(1, 92) = 3.34, p = .07, MSE = 0.012. The largest mean difference indicated lower familiarity estimates associated with the description as compared with the no description, at the short lag (.34 vs. .39, respectively). No other findings approached significance.