title: The verbal facilitation effect: re-reading person descriptions as a system variable to improve identification performance.
abstract: When witnesses report a crime, police usually ask for a description of the perpetrator. Several studies suggested that verbalising faces leads to a detriment in identification performance (verbal overshadowing effect [VOE]) but the effect has been difficult to replicate. Here, we sought to reverse the VOE by inducing context reinstatement as a system variable through re-reading one's own description before an identification task. Participants (N = 208) watched a video film and were then dismissed (control group), only described the perpetrator, or described and later re-read their own descriptions before identification in either target-present or target-absent lineups after a 2-day or a 5-week delay. Identification accuracy was significantly higher after re-reading (85.0%) than in the no description control group (62.5%) irrespective of target presence. Data were internally replicated using a second target and corroborated by several small meta-analyses. Identification accuracy was related to description quality. Moreover, there was a tendency towards a verbal facilitation effect (VFE) rather than a VOE. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses confirm that our findings are not due to a shift in response bias but truly reflect improvement of recognition performance. Differences in the ecological validity of study paradigms are discussed.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Giessen , Giessen , Germany.
authors.forename: Siegfried L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Sporer
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Giessen , Giessen , Germany.
authors.forename: Kristina S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Kaminski
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Giessen , Giessen , Germany.
authors.forename: Maike C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Davids
authors.affiliation: b Department of Psychology , Wofford College , Spartanburg , South Carolina.
authors.forename: Dawn
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: McQuiston
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003415:Crime; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012153:Retention, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Verbal facilitation effect; context reinstatement; eyewitness identification; person description; retention interval