Westerman D L, Larsen J D
Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.
Am J Psychol. 1997 Fall;110(3):417-28.
Two experiments investigate the nature of the verbal-overshadowing effect-the finding that recognition performance for certain stimuli is impaired if it is described verbally (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). Impairment on a face-recognition task was found, although participants produced not a verbal description of the target but, instead, a description of another object (a car) presented in the study phase. These results support the idea that the verbal-overshadowing effect reflects a general shift in the processes involved in face recognition rather than a specific impairment for the described stimulus. Results also support the notion that the impairing effect of verbalization is unique to certain types of stimuli; verbalization impaired recognition of a face but not of a car.
两项实验探究了言语遮蔽效应的本质——即如果某些刺激通过言语进行描述，那么对其的识别表现就会受损这一发现（斯库勒和恩斯特勒 - 斯库勒，1990）。尽管参与者给出的并非目标的言语描述，而是对研究阶段呈现的另一个物体（一辆汽车）的描述，但在面部识别任务中仍发现了表现受损的情况。这些结果支持了这样一种观点，即言语遮蔽效应反映了面部识别过程中所涉及的一般转变，而非针对所描述刺激的特定损伤。结果还支持了这样一种观念，即言语化的损害效应对于某些类型的刺激而言是独特的；言语化损害了对面部的识别，但未损害对汽车的识别。
