title: An initial search for visual overshadowing.
abstract: A consistent, albeit fragile, finding over the last couple of decades has been that verbalization of hard-to-verbalize stimuli, such as faces, interferes with subsequent recognition of the described target stimulus. We sought to elicit a similar phenomenon whereby visualization interferes with verbal recognition--that is, visual overshadowing. We randomly assigned participants (n = 180) to either concrete (easy to visualize) or abstract (difficult to visualize) sentence conditions. Following presentation, participants were asked to verbalize the sentence, visualize the sentence, or work on a filler task. As predicted, visualization of an abstract verbal stimulus resulted in significantly lower recognition accuracy; unexpectedly, however, so did verbalization. The findings are discussed within the framework of fuzzy-trace theory.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN 37044-4594, USA. harrisk@apsu.edu
authors.forename: Kevin R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Stephen T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Paul
authors.forename: Carolyn E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Adams-Price
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D055815:Young Adult