When words paint the picture: accurate eyewitness IDs without visual imagery

Abstract

Police often ask a witness for a verbal description of a perpetrator’s face immediately after witnessing an event (e.g., Fahsing et al., 2004; Wells et al., 2021). A good description increases the likelihood that police will locate the suspect for later identification. However, this technique provides a conundrum for police as describing a face is shown to make identification from a lineup more difficult, a phenomenon called verbal overshadowing (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). Verbal overshadowing occurs because either people are reluctant to make a lineup identification post description, or there is a disruption at retrieval where memory for the perpetrator’s face is impaired (Mickes & Wixted, 2015; Protzko et al., 2022). Concerns over the impact of this phenomenon in legal settings are well founded, however, whether verbal descriptions are detrimental to all witnesses is unknown. Some people have low or no visual imagery ability, (aphantasics; Zeman et al., 2015, 2020), and do not have pictures in their ‘minds’ eye’, thus, may not rely on visual mental representations. Without this reliance on mental pictures, aphantasics may rely upon verbal description to retrieve face recognition information. This project investigates whether mental imagery ability and/or verbal description of a perpetrator influence accurate lineup identifications.