**Sample size & demographics** We will collect data from 120 undergraduate students at the Department of Psychology here at the University of Münster. We are collecting 20 % more than the required 100 participants to ensure that we have at least 50 participants per condition. Our undergraduate students almost exactly match the criteria described in the form (with a clear majority of female students approaching the 80%). To make certain that we stay exactly within the predefined borders we will monitor the demographics every 20 participants. Should there be a deviation we will correct it by recruiting a specific sex or age group for the remaining participants. Almost all our students are Caucasian, so that we do not expect any problems regarding a possible other-race effect. **Experimenters** We will use trained undergraduate research students for the data collection. Karoline Salmen and Josefine Körte are both experienced research assistants who have run many studies in our lab. Both students are supervised by the PIs Gerald Echterhoff and René Kopietz, who will set up weekly team meetings to monitor the data collection process and to discuss any issues that may arise. **Data collection** Experimenters will ask each participant whether s/he has normal or corrected-to-normal eyesight and whether they are German native speakers / or fluent in German to ensure they can understand all the instructions. Participants will be allotted to experimental conditions in a pre-defined random order, which has been generated via random.org's [list randomizer function][1]. The experimental program is set up in a way that experimenters are blind to the experimental condition. Participants will be first semester psychology students who will have no prior knowledge of the verbal overshadowing effect. The effect is not discussed in any of the students’ courses. The study will be advertised as being about “Perception and Memory”. The study will closely follow the original procedure (for more details please see below): 1. Subjects are recruited to participate in a study of memory and perception 2. Subjects are randomly assigned to the experimental condition or the control condition. 3. Subjects are told: “This experiment consists of several tasks. First, please pay close attention to the following video” 4. Subjects view a 30-second video depicting a bank robbery. 5. Subjects receive different instructions depending on their condition assignment: *Experimental Condition*: “Please describe the appearance of the bank robber in as much detail as possible. It is important that you attempt to describe all of his different facial features. Please write down everything that you can think of regarding the bank robber’s appearance. It is important that you try to describe him for the full 5 minutes” *Control Condition*: “Please name as many countries and their capitals as possible.” 6. After 3 minutes, each group should receive the following reminder: *Experimental Condition*: “Please continue describing every detail of the bank robber. It is important that you provide as full a description as possible” *Control Condition*: “Please continue to list all of the countries and their capitals you know. It is important that you continue this task for the full five minutes.” 7. After 5 minutes of writing/typing, all subjects should spend 20 minutes working on the provided crossword puzzle. (*Because we use a computerized version of the experiment the crossword puzzle is presented on the computer as well.*) 8. Subjects view the lineup of 8 faces and identify the one they saw in the robbery video or report that it wasn’t present. They should read/hear the following instructions: “Next you will see an lineup with 8 faces. Please identify the individual in the line up who you believe was the bank robber in the video you watched earlier. If you do not believe the bank robber is present please indicate ‘not present’” 9. Because the lineup task is computerized, the images are numbered 1-8 to allow a keyboard response. The last sentence of the instructions in #8 will contain the following instruction: “...please indicate ‘not present’ by pressing '9'. Click ‘continue’ to view the image.” 10. Subjects rate their confidence in their selection. They will be given the following instructions: “Please indicate your confidence in your selection from the lineup on a scale from 1 (guessing) to 7 (certain).” **Additions to the original protocol:** Because we dubbed the video for our German participants we want to control for potential language / sound problems. We will add a question concerning the meaning of the depicted event and the bank robber’s actions. At the end of the experiment, participants will be asked to name the type of event in a few words (no more than six) in an open format. We will check on an ongoing basis (every 12-15 participants) whether the answer contains robbery (German „Banküberfall“) or a close synonym. We will add a funneled suspicion check at the end of the study to ensure that no participants knew about the aim of the study. The experimenters will debrief the participants. They will explain the nature of the experiment and verbal overshadowing effect to them. Furthermore, participants will be informed about the replication project and will be asked not to talk about the experiment, particularly the recognition task, or the project to any of their peers. The study uses the original materials where possible. However, all materials, that is, the video as well as the instructions have been carefully adapted to German. We translated the original instructions into German and let a native speaker of English translate them back into English to control for possible errors in the translation. (Please see the materials section for the German instructions.) Instead of the original crossword puzzle we have found a German one that will take participants at least the required 20 minutes to solve. The puzzle does not contain any words related to memory, crime, or other words that are related to the target video. ***Exclusion criteria & additional sampling*** Based on the approved protocol we will exclude participants when - They did not follow instructions on the experimental or control task - They did not complete all tasks - The Experimenter incorrectly administered the task or instructions - They knew or guessed the aim of the study (based on responses from the suspicion check) - They are non-Caucasian or older than 25 We will recruit additional participants for those who fail to name the type of event correctly. Based on the interval checks we will do this immediately, that is, every participant who did not understand the nature of the event depicted in the video will be replaced. All other excluded cases will only be replaced in case we fall below the targeted 50 cases per condition. Data will only be excluded prior to examining the recognition task performance. Furthermore, all problem cases will remain in the data set and clearly be labeled as such (e.g., incomplete data, did not understand the event etc.), making transparent who was excluded for which specific reason. [1]: http://www.random.org/lists/