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 identification. 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 specific features—either eyes and mouth, or eyebrows and nose—before a recognition test. Participants in the control condition completed a filler task. The measure of recognition was whether participants could recognize ...