| It is proposed that describing a face in words directs attention to facial features at the expense of the higher-order configurations those features compose. This hypothesis was tested in three studies in which participants were asked to recognize either a face or a facial feature following one of several types of verbal and nonverbal encoding. Results of Study 1 indicated that, compared to participants who generated names for a face, those who described the face were better at recognizing a facial feature, but worse at recognizing the face itself. Two followup studies suggested that the effects were due to the fact that verbalizers tended to talk about and attend to facial features, and that at least one kind of verbal description, naming, may actually enhance configurality. A reinterpretation of the construct of configurality is offered in terms of a hierarchy of levels of processing. The results are discussed with respect to verbalization's role in attitudes, judgment and decision making, emotional response, and psychotherapy. |
