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.
What This Study Is About
Researchers investigated whether describing a criminal's face out loud helps or hurts a person's ability to later identify them in a police lineup. They specifically looked at how this process differs for people with aphantasia—the inability to create mental images or "pictures" in the mind.
How They Studied It
The study included 323 participants who were shown videos of crimes being committed. Afterward, some participants were asked to provide a detailed verbal description of the perpetrator, while others did a simple math task instead. Everyone then tried to identify the criminal from a six-person lineup.
Participants also completed the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) to measure their mental imagery ability. Based on their scores, they were grouped into "low imagers" (aphantasics), "typical imagers," and "high imagers" (hyperphantasics).
What They Found
In many previous studies, describing a face actually makes it harder to recognize it later—a glitch called "verbal overshadowing." However, this study found the opposite: describing the face generally helped people make more accurate identifications.
Crucially, the researchers found that people with aphantasia might benefit the most from using words. While aphantasics often report having poorer memory for faces, those in the study who described the perpetrator were more likely to pick the correct person from the lineup compared to those who didn't.
What This Might Mean
This suggests that people with aphantasia may rely on verbal "facts" and descriptions to store memories rather than mental pictures. For these individuals, putting a face into words acts as a memory cue that helps them recognize the person later. While the results are promising, the number of aphantasic participants was small (16 people), so more research is needed to confirm if this "verbal boost" is a consistent tool for the aphantasic community.
One Interesting Detail
The researchers noted that even though aphantasics cannot "see" the face in their mind, they still have a memory of what the person looks like; they simply use a different, non-visual "filing system" to store that information.