WORDS GET IN THE WAY.

PITTSBURGH (Pa.); PENNSYLVANIA; UNITED States

Law-enforcement officials typically solicit descriptions of criminals from eyewitnesses, often just after an offense has occurred. When crime-scene interviewing had its first brush with memory research in 1990, however, the results proved disturbing. A series of laboratory studies found that memories for a mock criminal's face were much poorer among eyewitnesses who had described what the perpetrator looked like shortly after seeing him, compared with those who hadn't. Research into verbal-memory theft began with a staged felony. Psychologist Jonathan W. Schooler of the University of Pittsburgh and a colleague showed volunteers a 30-second video depicting a man robbing a bank. Schooler has adopted an explanation which posits that the act of describing a face replaces unconscious perceptual operations with word-based, largely conscious thinking. Studies have confirmed that, at least under certain circumstances, verbal descriptions impair memories for faces and other hard-to-describe perceptions, such as the taste of a fine wine or the sound of a person's voice. For instance, in a 1995 study, Schooler reported that verbal descriptions disrupted white volunteers' memories for the faces of white but not black individuals. For instance, verbal descriptions impede one's mental map of an area, according to Schooler and his Pittsburgh colleague Stephen M. Fiore.