Abstract
Selective “blindness” to repeated words in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) occurs even when omitting these words compromises sentence syntax and meaning. The contributions of lexical and contextual factors to this repetition blindness (RB) phenomenon were evaluated using three tasks that combined RB and ambiguity resolution paradigms. During an RSVP sentence, a repeated word and matched but incongruous control were presented simultaneously, and participants were asked to report the entire sentence, including only the appropriate word. Substantial RB was evident in impaired report of repeated targets, whereas report of nonrepeated targets was enhanced when the distractor was a repeat. Experiment 2 confirmed these results with reduced reporting requirements, and Experiment 3 demonstrated the independence of repetition and sentence congruity effects. Results across all contexts support a lexical account of RB, which assumes that reactivation and identification of rapidly repeated words are impaired due to the refractory nature of lexical representations.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Abrams, L., Dyer, J. R., & MacKay, D. G. (1996). Repetition blindness interacts with syntactic grouping in rapidly presented sentences. Psychological Science, 7, 100–104.
Armstrong, I. T., & Mewhort, D. J. K. (1995). Repetition deficit in RSVP displays: Encoding failure or retrieval failure? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 21, 1044–1052.
Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., & Gulikers, L. (1995). The CELEX lexical database (Release 2) [CD-ROM]. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Linguistic Data Consortium.
Bavelier, D. (1994). Repetition blindness between visually different items: The case of pictures and words. Cognition, 51, 199–236.
Bavelier, D. (1999). Role and nature of object representations in perceiving and acting. In V. Coltheart (Ed.), Fleeting memories: Cognition of brief visual stimuli (pp. 151–179). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bavelier, D., & Jordan, M. I. (1992). A dynamical model of priming and repetition blindness. In C. L. Giles, S. J. Hanson, & J. D. Cowan (Eds.), Advances in neural information processing systems (Vol. 5, pp. 879–886). San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Bavelier, D., & Potter, M. C. (1992). Visual and phonological codes in repetition blindness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 18, 134–147.
Bavelier, D., Prasada, S., & Segui, J. (1994). Repetition blindness between words: Nature of the orthographic and phonological representations involved. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 20, 1–19.
Chun, M. M. (1997). Types and tokens in visual processing: A double dissociation between the attentional blink and repetition blindness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 23, 738–755.
Coltheart, V. (1999). Phonological codes in reading comprehension, short-term memory, and memory for rapid visual sequences. In V. Coltheart (Ed.), Fleeting memories: Cognition of brief visual stimuli (pp. 181–223). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Crowder, R. G. (1968). Intraserial repetition effects in immediate memory. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 7, 446–451.
Fagot, C., & Pashler, H. (1995). Repetition blindness: Perception or memory failure? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 21, 275–292.
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191.
Harris, C. L., & Morris, A. L. (2001). Identity and similarity in repetition blindness: No cross-over interaction. Cognition, 81, 1–40.
Hochhaus, L., & Marohn, K. M. (1991). Repetition blindness depends on perceptual capture and token individuation failure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 17, 422–432.
Johnston, J. C., Hochhaus, L., & Ruthruff, E. (2002). Repetition blindness has a perceptual locus: Evidence from online processing of targets in RSVP streams. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 28, 477–489.
Kahneman, D., & Treisman, A. (1984). Changing views of attention and automaticity. In R. Parasuraman & D. Davies (Eds.), Varieties of attention (pp. 29–61). New York: Academic Press.
Kanwisher, N. G. (1987). Repetition blindness: Type recognition without token individuation. Cognition, 27, 117–143.
Kanwisher, N. G., & Potter, M. C. (1990). Repetition blindness: Levels of processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 16, 30–47.
Luo, C. R., & Caramazza, A. (1995). Repetition blindness under minimum memory load: Effects of spatial and temporal proximity and the encoding effectiveness of the first item. Perception & Psychophysics, 57, 1053–1064.
Luo, C. R., & Caramazza, A. (1996). Temporal and spatial repetition blindness: Effect of presentation mode and repetition lag on the perception of repeated items. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 22, 95–113.
Masson, M. E. J. (2004). When words collide: Facilitation and interference in the report of repeated words from rapidly presented lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 30, 1279–1289.
Park, J., & Kanwisher, N. (1994). Determinants of repetition blindness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 20, 500–519.
Potter, M. C. (1993). Very short-term conceptual memory. Memory & Cognition, 21, 156–161.
Potter, M. C. (1999). Understanding sentences and scenes: The role of conceptual short-term memory. In V. Coltheart (Ed.), Fleeting memories: Cognition of brief visual stimuli (pp. 13–46). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Potter, M. C., & Lombardi, L. (1990). Regeneration in the short-term recall of sentences. Journal of Memory & Language, 29, 633–654.
Potter, M. C., Moryadas, A., Abrams, I., & Noel, A. (1993). Word perception and misperception in context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 19, 3–22.
Potter, M. C., Stiefbold, D., & Moryadas, A. (1998). Word selection in reading sentences: Preceding versus following contexts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 24, 979–992.
Raymond, J. E., Shapiro, K. L., & Arnell, K. M. (1992). Temporary suppression of visual processing in an RSVP task: An attentional blink? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 18, 849–860.
Sternberg, S. (1969). The discovery of processing stages: Extension of Donders’ methods. In W. G. Koster (Ed.), Attention and performance II (pp. 276–315). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Whittlesea, B. W. A. (2003). On the construction of behavior and subjective experience: The production and evaluation of performance. In J. S. Bowers & C. J. Marsolek (Eds.), Rethinking implicit memory (pp. 239–260). New York: Oxford University Press.
Whittlesea, B. W. A., Dorken, M. D., & Podrouzek, K. W. (1995). Repeated events in rapid lists: I. Encoding and representation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 21, 1670–1688.
Whittlesea, B. W. A., & Hughes, A. D. (2005). The devil is in the detail: A constructionist account of repetition blindness. In N. Ohta, C. M. MacLeod, & B. Uttl (Eds.), Dynamic cognitive processes (pp. 101–130). Tokyo: Springer.
Whittlesea, B. W. A., & Masson, M. E. J. (2005). Repetition blindness in rapid lists: Activation and inhibition versus construction and attribution. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 31, 54–67.
Whittlesea, B. W. A., & Podrouzek, K. W. (1995). Repeated events in rapid lists: II. Remembering repetitions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 21, 1689–1697.
Whittlesea, B. W. A., & Wai, K. H. (1997). Reverse “repetition blindness” and release from “repetition blindness”: Constructive variations on the “repetition blindness” effect. Psychological Research, 60, 173–182.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP0345724, awarded to the second author.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bond, R., Andrews, S. Repetition blindness in sentence contexts: Not just an attribution?. Memory & Cognition 36, 295–313 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.2.295
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.2.295