The Misremembrance of Wines Past: Verbal and Perceptual Expertise Differentially Mediate Verbal Overshadowing of Taste Memory

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

“…If this effect was sensitive to the asymmetry between procedural and verbal skill, as in verbal overshadowing (cf. Melcher & Schooler, 1996), the higher skill golfers should be more disrupted by verbalization. Indeed, the lower skill group might benefit from verbalization, as suggested by work on skill-focused attention .…”

“…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.…”

“…For instance, Melcher and Schooler (1996) found that verbal overshadowing depends on one's relative perceptual and verbal expertise in a domain. In a study of wine drinkers, only those at an intermediate skill level recognized a previously sampled wine less accurately after describing it, suggesting that impairment occurs only when perceptual expertise outstrips verbal expertise.…”

The fundamental role of memory in olfactory perception

“…Thus, when two odors have been mixed together, the two components become harder to tell apart. Fourth, a considerable body of evidence suggests that olfactory perceptual experts, particularly wine tasters, are better at discriminating between wines even in the absence of the linguistic skills associated with formal wine training [22,23] (Fig. 1a).…”

When do words hurt? A multiprocess view of the effects of verbalization on visual memory.

“…This phenomenon has broadly been termed 'verbal overshadowing' and has been found to apply to memory for faces and colours (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990), maps (Fiore & Schooler, 2002), mushrooms (Melcher & Schooler, 2004), voices (e.g. Perfect, Hunt & Harris, 2002), wines (Melcher & Schooler, 1996), analogies (Lane & Schooler, 2004) and visual imagery (e.g. Brandimonte, Schooler & Gabbino, 1997).…”