This special issue, Verbalising Visual Memories, comprises research on: (a) verbal interference and facilitation in face and person processing; (b) similarities and differences between effects of verbalisation and processing in the Navon task (Navon, 1977); and (c) effects of verbalisation in visual imagery and object memory. It is clear that verbal processes influence the encoding, storage and retrieval of visual information. Moreover, different forms of verbal interference and facilitation are likely to be due to different mechanisms in different contexts. The state-of-the-art is that we are just beginning to understand the rich complexity of the problem.

The Psychology of Learning and Motivation publishes empirical and theoretical contributions in cognitive and experimental psychology, ranging from classical and instrumental conditioning to complex learning and problem solving. Each chapter provides a thoughtful integration of a body of work.

Ways and means of verbalization and communication are diverse and so are their effects on mental representations and judgments. Accordingly, the present thesis aimed at investigating effects of verbalization and communication on mental representations and judgments from various angles using a multimethod approach. Three different papers are presented: In the first paper, two experiments demonstrate the saying-is-believing effect using visual target material: Participants remembered a target persons everyday behavior (Experiment 1) and a forensically relevant event (Experiment 2) presented in videos in accordance with their audience-tuned message. Participants communication had a greater impact on their mental representations in the evaluation of a previously presented event when they experienced a socially shared reality with their audience. The research reported in the second paper investigated the impact of linguistic abstraction used in communicated descriptions on mental representations in the linguistic category model framework. In this experiment, participants applied the level of linguistic abstraction from their descriptions of behavioral events to abstraction levels in their mental representations of the events, only when they communicated with an in-group (vs. out-group) audience. For the first time, an "abstracting-is-believing" effect, depending on the audiences group membership, was revealed. In the third paper, two experiments examined retrieval ease effects on subsequent memory judgments in the applied field of eyewitness memory. It was demonstrated that centrality of recalled information can have a strong impact on individuals memory judgments: When recalled information was peripheral, participants mnemonic certainty declined. In summary, the present five experiments provide evidence that mental representations and mnemonic judgments of individuals can be profoundly shaped by their own verbalization and communication of events.

This volume features the complete text of all regular papers, posters, and summaries of symposia presented at the 17th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.