Reverse "repetition blindness" and release from "repetition blindness": constructive variations on the "repetition blindness" effect.
N. Kanwisher observed that subjects shown rapid lists of words recall two occurrences of a repeated word less often than two unrelated words. Kanwisher explained this "repetition blindness" through a type/token account, which assumes that encoding the second occurrence of a repeated word is inhibited if it occurs too soon after the first. More fundamentally, it assumes that failure to recall a word from a rapid list results from failure to encode its occurrence. Contrary to that interpretation, we observed that subjects can often recognize words that they cannot recall from a rapid list. We also observed "reverse repetition blindness," when the second presentation was given greater contextual support, and a "release from repetition blindness" effect, when distinctive contextual support was given to ech occurrence. We concluded that a constructive account of remembering provides a better explanation of all of the effects.
Whittlesea
B W
BW
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC., Canada. bruce_whittlesea@sfu.ca
Wai
K H
KH
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011601:Psychophysics; D011932:Reading; D012691:Serial Learning; D014706:Verbal Learning