The effect of verbal description and processing type on face identification

Abstract

Research suggests that describing a face can have detrimental or beneficial effects upon its subsequent recognition (Brown & Lloyd-Jones, 2005; Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). This study manipulated the kind of description (holistic, featural, or no description) that participants engaged in, and also introduced a postdescription processing task (global or local letter identification; Navon, 1977). Identification of the faces across 10 trials was better for participants describing the faces holistically than in the no description or featural conditions, thus demonstrating verbal facilitation. Global processing tasks produced better identification than local processing tasks. We suggest that the effects of type of description and type of processing are independent, and the results are discussed in relation to Schooler's (2002) transfer inappropriate processing shift hypothesis.