How did you get here from there? Verbal overshadowing of spatial mental models

Abstract

This experiment investigated the reactive effects of verbal reports on spatial mental models. Participants studied a map marked with a route and then either verbalized their memory for the route or engaged in an unrelated verbal activity. Results showed that verbalization hindered performance on a measure of configural knowledge (straight-line distance estimations) but had no overall influence on a measure of featural knowledge (route distance estimations). In addition, verbalization differentially interacted with verbal ability on the memory measures. The implications for research on memory for spatial environments and the evidence for the existence of two distinct forms of memory representations (route versus configural) in spatial mental models are discussed.

Overthinking skilled motor performance: Or why those who teach can’t do

“…We must emphasize, however, that attention to the components of the skill by itself may not be enough; verbalizing memory for the action may be critical for impairing later performance. In the verbal overshadowing domain, related findings have shown, for example, that mental imagery of a perceptual stimulus is not sufficient to produce verbal overshadowing, implicating verbal processing as integral to this kind of memory error (Fiore & Schooler, 2002;Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). Whatever the mechanistic basis, the present finding indicates that simply verbally expressing one's recent motor action may sow the seeds of poor execution during later performance.…”

“…Disruption occurs only when individuals attempt to describe memory for a stimulus with indescribable qualities. Verbal overshadowing has been observed in such domains as taste (Melcher & Schooler, 1996), audition (Houser, Fiore, & Schooler, 2003), map memory (Fiore & Schooler, 2002), and insight problem solving (Schooler et al, 1993), establishing that the effect is not limited to visual memories per se.…”

Perceptual and conceptual training mediate the verbal overshadowing effect in an unfamiliar domain

“…In the prototypical experiment, people who see a difficult-to-describe face and describe it from memory are less likely to correctly recognize that face than are people who do not describe it. In addition to being replicated for faces (for a recent meta-analysis, see ), verbal overshadowing is observed with other forms of visual memory, including visual forms (Brandimonte, Hitch, & Bishop, 1992) and maps (Fiore & Schooler, 2002) as well as other sensory memory domains including taste (Melcher & Schooler, 1996), audition (Houser, Fiore, & Schooler, 2003;Perfect, Hunt, & Harris, 2002), and nonmnemonic areas such as affective decision making (Wilson & Schooler, 1991), insight problem solving (Schooler, Ohlsson, & Brooks, 1993), visual reasoning (DeShon, Chan, & Weissbein, 1995), and analogical transfer (Sieck, Quinn, & Schooler, 1999).…”

Novice motor performance: Better not to verbalize

“…This negative effect of verbalization on memory was termed the verbalovershadowing effect. This effect has been observed in other perceptual domains, such as describing a picture of a mushroom (Melcher & Schooler, 2004), describing a previously studied route map (Fiore & Schooler, 2002), or wine tasting (Melcher & Schooler, 1996).…”