Repetition Blindness, Forward and Backward

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-1-2002

Department

Psychology

Abstract

In these experiments, 2 letters were presented sequentially to the left and right of fixation, followed by pattern masks. Report was cued by spatial location (Experiments 1a, 1b, 2, 4, and 5) or temporal position (Experiments 3, 4, and 5). In all experiments, 2 identical letters on a trial resulted in reduced accuracy of report (repetition blindness; RB) for both the 1st and 2nd presented letters. This decrement was greater for the 2nd letter if subjects expected temporal cues, but tended to be greater for the lst letter if they expected spatial cues. Analyses of errors and responses on catch trials indicated no bias against report of repetitions, and the repetition decrement did not interact with output order. The data are inconsistent with both type-refractoriness and memory-retrieval accounts of RB. A modified version of N. G. Kanwisher's (1987) token-individuation theory is proposed to account for the results.

Publication Title

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Volume

28

Issue

1

First Page

137

Last Page

149

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