Cognitive Psychology Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Liège Liège, Belgium.
Front Psychol. 2013 Dec 24;4:970. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00970. eCollection 2013.
Verbal descriptions of unfamiliar faces have been found to impair later identification of these faces in adults, a phenomenon known as the "verbal overshadowing effect" (VOE). Although determining whether children are good at describing unfamiliar individuals and whether these descriptions impair their recognition performance is critical to gaining a better understanding children's eyewitness ability, only a couple of studies have examined this dual issue in children and these found no evidence of VOE. However, as there are some methodological criticisms of these studies, we decided to conduct two further experiments in 7-8, 10-11, and 13-14-year-old children and in adults using a more optimal method for the VOE to be observed. Evidence of the VOE on face identification was found in both children and adults. Moreover, neither the accuracy of descriptions, nor delay nor target presence in the lineup was found to be associated with identification accuracy. The theoretical and developmental implications of these findings are discussed.
对不熟悉的人脸的口头描述已被发现会损害成年人对这些人脸的后续识别，这种现象被称为“口头遮蔽效应”（VOE）。虽然确定儿童是否擅长描述不熟悉的个体以及这些描述是否会损害他们的识别表现对于更好地理解儿童的目击能力至关重要，但只有少数研究在儿童中检验了这一双重问题，而这些研究没有发现 VOE 的证据。然而，由于这些研究存在一些方法学上的批评，我们决定在 7-8 岁、10-11 岁和 13-14 岁的儿童以及成年人中使用更优的方法进行另外两项实验，以观察 VOE。在儿童和成年人中都发现了 VOE 对面部识别的影响。此外，描述的准确性、延迟以及阵容中目标的存在都与识别准确性无关。讨论了这些发现的理论和发展意义。
