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Verbal overshadowing is a controversial theory in the psychological sciences first identified by Jonathan Schooler & Tonya Engster-Schooler in 1990. Verbal overshadowing occurs when a person’s accuracy while remembering a face worsens after having given a verbal description of the face. For example, take the case of a person witnessing a robbery and a police officer approaching them afterwards asking for a verbal description of the culprit. If verbal overshadowing occurs during this verbal description, then the witness would be unable to accurately identify that face later. This is said to have a negative effect on the witness’ recall memory. The negative effects of verbal overshadowing have been found across numerous studies, but opposite effects have also been found, in which the witness’ recall improves after having given a verbal description. These are said to have a positive effect on the witness’ recall memory.

Verbal overshadowing holds specific implications in law practices during the use of eyewitness testimony. It is often standard law enforcement practice to acquire a verbal description of a perpetrators’ appearance from any eyewitnesses immediately following a crime. If verbal overshadowing occurs during these verbal recalls, it will decrease the person’s ability to accurately identify the perpetrator later, as in a police lineup. This could also lead the witness to giving a false ID of the culprit, during which they pick out the wrong person in the lineup.

Acquiring verbal descriptions from eyewitnesses have shown positive, negative, and no effect on later recall by the witness of the culprit’s appearance, revealing that verbal overshadowing does not occur in all cases. Before these studies by Schooler and Engster-Schooler were published, it was thought that asking eyewitnesses for verbal descriptions of perpetrators could either improve the person’s memory of the face they were recalling or have no influence at all. Although results in studies on the effects of verbal descriptions have varied since the initial study, there are still theories behind the cases in which negative effects are found. It is thought that verbal overshadowing can occur because of memory impairment during verbal discussion leading to the witness being unable to distinguish the culprit from others in a lineup. Another theory is that the witness feels more reserved about choosing a perpetrator out of a lineup and holds back from making a decision. Since the results of studies involving verbal descriptions preceding recall have varied through the years, psychologists continue to research and debate on how, where, and when verbal overshadowing occurs. The negative effect of verbal overshadowing is theorized to be dependent upon time, situation, and context.