Does one's ability to describe an object with words affect his or her ability to identify that object visually?
As a follow-up, does one's ability to describe an object with words affect his or her ability to help others identify that same object?
If the answer to either or both of the above questions above is "yes," then in what ways are those abilities affected?
Damage to the corpus callosum results in various split-brain disorders. I remember one of them being such that if you present the patient with an object in one of their visual fields, then they can describe its shape and color, but can't identify the objects. If you present the objects in the other visual field, then they can correctly identify the object. However, I don't remember the name of the patient, or the study.
However, just by looking at patient VP from Funnell, Corballis, & Gazzaniga's study we can see that the language processing and visual identification processing parts of the brain react differently to damage of the corpus callosum. Thus, it would not be surprising to see effects of being able to describe in words, but not identify as I described in the previous paragraph.
If I have a bit more time later, I will try to hunt down the study I mentioned in the first part of my answer.
