Abstract
Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal overshadowing” effect (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). More recent studies suggested that this effect might be substantially smaller than first reported. Given uncertainty about the effect size, the influence of this finding in the memory literature, and its practical importance for police procedures, we conducted two collections of preregistered direct replications (RRR1 and RRR2) that differed only in the order of the description task and a filler task. In RRR1, when the description task immediately followed the robbery, participants who provided a description were 4% less likely to select the robber than were those in the control condition. In RRR2, when the description was delayed by 20 min, they were 16% less likely to select the robber. These findings reveal a robust verbal overshadowing effect that is strongly influenced by the relative timing of the tasks. The discussion considers further implications of these replications for our understanding of verbal overshadowing.
Highlights
In RRR2, when the description was delayed by 20 w minutes, they were 16% less likely to select the robber. These findings reveal a robust verbal overshadowing effect that is strongly influenced by the relative timing of the
The verbal overshadowing effect is thought to be weaker with other race faces than with own race faces (Fallshore & Schooler, 1995), only White participants ev were included in the analyses reported here
Participants were asked to list the states of the United States and their capitals, but for the replication protocol, the control task was changed because participants outside the United States might not be as familiar with states and capitals in the United States
Summary
On labs by the Association for Psychological Science via a grant from the Center for Open. Forest plot of the difference in false identification rate on error trials between the verbal description condition and the countries/capitals condition for RRR1 Negative effects, those to the left of the vertical dashed line, constitute evidence that people who verbally described the robber were more likely to make the error of selecting the wrong person from a lineup from a lineup. Forest plot of the difference in false identification rate on error trials between the verbal description condition and the countries/capitals condition for RRR2 Negative effects, those to the left of the vertical dashed line, constitute evidence that people who verbally described the robber were more likely to make the error of selecting the wrong. Following our pre registered plans for both studies, we included a self report question of visual acuity, a brief test to measure potential effects of demand characteristics on the results, and collected data on reaction times for making identifications and confidence ratings. Analyses of the additional data can be found on our OSF page
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