The Phenomenon of Verbal Overshadowing Effect - Report Example

Verbal psychology Name: Institution: Literature review Verbal overshadowing effect is the phenomenon used to describe the face impairs recognition of its face that was seen previously. Verbal overshadowing can be obtained when subjects are provided with and can generate a description of earlier a face that was seen earlier. It can also be obtained through te instructing of the subjects at the time of the test to be aware of the potentially competing memories may not improve and even worsen the recognition performance when the subjects generate the target face. In the past decade of research, many academic findings have been initiated in the investigation of the verbal overshadowing effect. These findings were first demonstrated by Schooler and Engstler-Schooler in the year 1990 who indicated that verbally describing a nonverbal stimulus like the face can deeply affect subsequent efforts in the identification of the stimulus. The personality disorder affects the personality of an individual. The individuals thus get extreme and inflexible personality traits which in turn affects their work, school or social relationships. Due to this inflexibility and extremity the individual’s patterns of thinking and behavior significantly differ from the expectations of society. They are therefore unable to function effectively within the society. (Heather Barnett Veaague, 2007) The common symptoms that the patients exhibit include antisocial personality disorder (breaking laws, lying to or conning others for fun or for personal benefit, being impulsive and not considering the results of this behavior, picking on other people or getting in fights, ignoring the safety of self or others). Another one is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (common obsessive thoughts include themes of violence, fear of germs and/or infection, and doubts about one’s character and/or behavior), and paranoid personality disorder (pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent). Efforts in the obtaining a verbal description from any witness immediately after an incident has been in the past few years been considered as a standard protocol for criminal investigators. In this case, various reasons are based on the during the investigation process that at least include the identification of the potential suspects in the vicinity that is immediate and as a basis for comparison to all the suspects that have identified during the course of the investigation (van Koppen and Lochun, 1997). Today, the current special issue on verbal overshadowing can be deeply defined through three critical aspects of the effect which are the; debates regarding the theoretical mechanisms that are governing the phenomenon, the boundary conditions that might used in defining when the effect is observed in a person, and when the new domains and paradigms that are used to explore the generality of the phenomenon (John Wiley & Sons, 2002). However, subsequent studies by Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) reiterate that the act of generating a verbal description on a witness might have a considerable harm to a witness’s memory when they are later asked to make identifications from an array of photos. In one case study in particular, Schooler and Engstler-Schooler requested their participants to take a 30-second video view that was depicting a bank robbery which was followed by another 20-minute distractor task where the participants were allowed to answer questions about the several passages that they had read from the literatures provided. Later on, the Participants were randomly then assigned to one of two conditions that was representing the critical manipulation. One of the groups was asked to write a report that is detailed on the face of the robber with the focus on each of the identified facial feature in regard to the full 5 minutes to generate their description. The second group was assigned an activity that wasn’t related at all. And immediately following this kind of manipulation, all the participants were then asked to make an attempt on the identification of a robber from the place of target in the array of the present photo that was containing eight faces. their results later were found to indicate that participants who had provided a description of the robber had an accuracy of 38% and were therefore significantly less accurate in the task of identification if compared with participants that were in the no-description control condition t hat had 64%.after five subsequent studies, Schooler and Engstler-Schooler occasionally demonstrated these deleterious effect of generating the verbal description on later identification accuracy, a phenomenon that the two scholars termed as the ‘verbal overshadowing’. Other scholars carrying out the research in this field do also assert that the findings of Schooler and Engstler- Schooler (1990), and the empirical literature has been greatly summarized in several reviews (Schooler et al., 1996, 1997). According to Meissner and Brigham, 2001, overshadowing phenomenon did examine the robustness of the effects across the comparisons of 29 experiments that did involve 2000 participants during the study. The inclusion of studies they conducted was focused on those that were investigating verbal overshadowing through the eyewitness or through the facial identification paradigm. In all the sample of the studies there was a small, yet significant, negative effect of about 0.12 which was indicating that the participants who described the target face were only but 1.27 times more likely to the later misidentifying the face from the lineup that was containing similar distracters when they were compared with participants who were not able to generate a description that could help them in the identification. Discussion of the effects According to Scholar et-al, the current special feature of applied Cognitive Psychology was thus developed in part with the aim of examining three critical aspects of the verbal overshadowing effect that appear to be in need of further academic research again. Firstly, the initial studies on the topic for more than a decade of research explorations on the overshadowing effect, the mechanisms that are underlying this phenomenon are seen to be continually debated among the number of researchers. Schooler et0al 1997 add that the interference that result from the verbalization might be from the type of memory processes required by the paradigm for instance the configural versus the featural processing of the faces, a theory that the scholars termed as a transfer inappropriate retrieval. In addition to this, several articles in the current pending feature further explore and provide supporting in the processing account which in this context including those that were authored by Brown and Lloyd-Jones, Finger, and Fiore and Schooler. Another effect is the effect that involves the self generated misinformation that occurs when the participants attempt to get the target stimulus from the memory during the description of the assigned task. Thus such a recoding or retrieval-based effect is said to have been first proposed by Schooler and Engstler Schooler in the year 1990, although it was later discounted due to the lack of enough evidence for the linking of the relationship between the quality of the verbal description and even the subsequent identification accuracy. Besides this, Meissner et al. (2001) are said to have recently demonstrated that retrieval-based effects can also lead to verbal overshadowing through the manipulation of the output criterion on the given description task. Meissner et al assets that although the overshadowing phenomenon has been replicated on numerous occasions, not all of the given or written studies have consistently observed the phenomenon which gives a second aspect that the current special issue will address involving the boundary conditions that are typically necessary for obtaining the effect. One of the critical aspects in this case appears to involve the instructions that are given to the participants in the case study at the time of the description task. For instance, Meissner and et al2001 meta-analysis reveal that the effects of overshadowing were more likely to occur when the participating participants were in any case given an elaborative as opposed to a standard or the free recall instruction during the description task. In addition, articles by Finger et al are seen to explore several theoretical factors that can be used to release or give the effects of verbal overshadowing. To further the analysis, Kitagami et al give an intriguing analysis of the influence of similarity in the lineup composition on the likelihood of the observation of the overshadowing effects. Lastly, in the examination of the overshadowing effect within the facial identification, paradigms and the basic phenomenon has also been observed when participants strongly try to generate descriptions of other difficult-to-describe stimuli such like the colors or even the abstract (Brandimonte et al., 1997). According to Schooler et al, other non-visual tasks such as wine tasting, the decision making, and insight problem-solving are also in inclusion though still a challenging effect(Schooler et al., 1993). The current therefore continues to give expansions on the domains of the application and paradigms of interest to researchers in the investigation of the generality of verbal overshadowing effect. For example, Perfect et al did provide an initial demonstration of the overshadowing in the recognition of the voice while on the other hand Fiore and Schooler did show the effect when the participants try to verbally describe their mental model of the spatial map of the voice. Brown et al add tha the piecemeal verses the elaborative description is assumed that the current special feature in overshadowing have greatly impacted on the special issue that did help in the more way of understanding of the theoretical and the applied aspects of the verbal overshadowing phenomenon. Hypothesis To guide in the attainment of the research study objectives, the following testable hypotheses will be formulated. It will be assumed that there exist a relationship between gender, age and the theory of verbal overshadowing among other factors, and their levels of effect that: 1. The verbal overshadowing effects reflects general shift in processes involved in face recognition rather than the specific impairment for the described stimulus. 2. The impairing effect of verbalization is unique to particular types of stimuli, verbalization impaired recognition of the face and not a car for the case. 3. The stimulus is coded with verbal and noon verbal and that the verbal coded is more identified than the non verbal. Methodology The research applied the ex-post factor approach. This is because there was a systematic experimental inquiry in which the variables were already in existence and were not perfectly manipulative. The design was geared towards testing the theories, identifying behavioral phenomena, satisfying existing effect of the issue in which these phenomena do occur (Daellenbach & Rouse, 2002). The Independent variable in this study included the workers motivation, effective leadership and proper identification of the feature while the dependent variable was effect of verbalization. The participants considered were those that have stayed in Australia for than ten years. Study and population sampling In selecting the participants in this study, stratified sampling technique was applied. In this case a proportionate allocation of the sampling fraction in each of the strata that was proportional to that of the total population i.e. 310 where we had 91 men and 210 female participants was used and which was the Australian student population in that particular class of psychology. There was also optimum allocation in which each of the stratums chosen was proportionate to the standard deviation of the entire psychology students’ population in the distribution of the existing variables. In this study larger samples were taken from the greatest variability. That is from the effective verbalization, time factors and color identification in order to generate the least sampling variance. Results From the study, its found from the sample that female persons have faster color naming capabilities compared to male persons. They also have a superior verbal capability and better motor perceptual abilities compared to their male counterparts and this therefore accounts for the faster response times when it comes to the naming of colors. (Maccoby and Jackline, 1974). Discussion The study therefore aimed at observing gender differences in regard to performance as per the hypothesis. There is a difference in favor of women based on the study though it isn’t that great at all. The model presented in this particular article also suggests that dysfunction or disruption in psychological processes is perceived to be a final pathway that is common in the development of humans (Kinderman 2009). This psychological model of human proposes that social and biological factors in addition to a person’s individual experiences result in human development through their conjoint efforts on those psychological processes (Kinderman 210). The author also discusses the implications for interventions, policy and research. This aspect in women is attributed to by their keenness in the choosing of dress colors. The study had some limitations in that it was only directed to those populations that have lived in Australia for more than ten years of which potential participants that would have aided in getting different results were locked out. References Brandimonte MA, Schooler JW, Gabbino P. (1997): Attenuating verbal overshadowing through visual retrieval cues. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition: pp. 915–931. Christian A. Meissner and Amina Memon(2002): Verbal overshadowing: A special issue exploring theoretical and applied issues. pp. 28. http://works.bepress.com/christian_meissner/14 Kinderman, Peter. A Psychological Model of Mental Disorder. New York, NY: Informa Healthcare. 2005. Print Meissner CA, Brigham JC. (2001): A meta-analysis of the verbal overshadowing effect in face identification. Applied Cognitive Psychology: pp. 603–616. Meissner CA, Brigham JC, Kelley CM. (2001): The influence of retrieval processes in verbal overshadowing. Memory & Cognition: pp. 176–186. Melcher JM, Schooler JW. (1996): The Mis-remembrance of wines past: verbal and perceptual expertise differentially mediates verbal overshadowing of taste memory. Journal of Memory and Language: pp. 231–245. Memon A, Bartlett J. (2002): The effects of verbalization on face recognition in young and older adults. Applied Cognitive Psychology: pp. 635–650. Appendix Read More

Efforts in the obtaining a verbal description from any witness immediately after an incident has been in the past few years been considered as a standard protocol for criminal investigators. In this case, various reasons are based on the during the investigation process that at least include the identification of the potential suspects in the vicinity that is immediate and as a basis for comparison to all the suspects that have identified during the course of the investigation (van Koppen and Lochun, 1997).

Today, the current special issue on verbal overshadowing can be deeply defined through three critical aspects of the effect which are the; debates regarding the theoretical mechanisms that are governing the phenomenon, the boundary conditions that might used in defining when the effect is observed in a person, and when the new domains and paradigms that are used to explore the generality of the phenomenon (John Wiley & Sons, 2002). However, subsequent studies by Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) reiterate that the act of generating a verbal description on a witness might have a considerable harm to a witness’s memory when they are later asked to make identifications from an array of photos.

In one case study in particular, Schooler and Engstler-Schooler requested their participants to take a 30-second video view that was depicting a bank robbery which was followed by another 20-minute distractor task where the participants were allowed to answer questions about the several passages that they had read from the literatures provided. Later on, the Participants were randomly then assigned to one of two conditions that was representing the critical manipulation. One of the groups was asked to write a report that is detailed on the face of the robber with the focus on each of the identified facial feature in regard to the full 5 minutes to generate their description.

The second group was assigned an activity that wasn’t related at all. And immediately following this kind of manipulation, all the participants were then asked to make an attempt on the identification of a robber from the place of target in the array of the present photo that was containing eight faces. their results later were found to indicate that participants who had provided a description of the robber had an accuracy of 38% and were therefore significantly less accurate in the task of identification if compared with participants that were in the no-description control condition t hat had 64%.

after five subsequent studies, Schooler and Engstler-Schooler occasionally demonstrated these deleterious effect of generating the verbal description on later identification accuracy, a phenomenon that the two scholars termed as the ‘verbal overshadowing’. Other scholars carrying out the research in this field do also assert that the findings of Schooler and Engstler- Schooler (1990), and the empirical literature has been greatly summarized in several reviews (Schooler et al., 1996, 1997).

According to Meissner and Brigham, 2001, overshadowing phenomenon did examine the robustness of the effects across the comparisons of 29 experiments that did involve 2000 participants during the study. The inclusion of studies they conducted was focused on those that were investigating verbal overshadowing through the eyewitness or through the facial identification paradigm. In all the sample of the studies there was a small, yet significant, negative effect of about 0.12 which was indicating that the participants who described the target face were only but 1.

27 times more likely to the later misidentifying the face from the lineup that was containing similar distracters when they were compared with participants who were not able to generate a description that could help them in the identification. Discussion of the effects According to Scholar et-al, the current special feature of applied Cognitive Psychology was thus developed in part with the aim of examining three critical aspects of the verbal overshadowing effect that appear to be in need of further academic research again.

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